


The mortifying ordeal of being known

by applecrumbledore



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Not Underage, Post-Canon, Series Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:20:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 46,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23728210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applecrumbledore/pseuds/applecrumbledore
Summary: Ed caught him looking. Roy expected a snide comment, but he just held his gaze for a long moment before turning back to his work. This was a new Edward, he was quickly learning. Here, he was a private young man who left behind some secret life to open a magic hospital in the woods. Ed, not Edward. "Doc," the nurse had called him.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 69
Kudos: 570





	1. Winter

_Love is a scene I render when you catch me wide awake_

_Love is a dream you enter though I shake and shake and shake you_

  
  


**_—Prologue: 1914, East City—_ **

The first time Ed really surprised him was followed closely by the second time, in a one-two sucker punch that left him reeling—quietly, and without admitting it to anyone—for years. In 1914 Ed was fifteen and prowled across the country hunting any trace of a miracle he could get his greedy little hands on, with his tin brother in tow. When he came back to Eastern headquarters, he was a nuisance at worst and entertaining at best. The two of them wouldn't begin to respect each other for a few years yet, and in the absence of that, they were stuck in a strange, mean stalemate where they constantly tried to fuck with each other, Roy with some semblance of subtly and Ed with as much fanfare as possible. Looking back, Roy thought, it was embarrassing how little he could control him.

The afternoon in question was on a sweltering summer day and Roy’s wing of HQ was under renovation. The walls of his office had been broken down and covered with sheeted plastic and plywood that reeked in the heat, and construction workers came and went all hours of the day. He'd also heard that the Elric brothers were back in town, which wasn't ideal. Ed would transmute the walls of his office into a gothic cathedral made of chrome, or whatever else the boy’s horrendous sense of taste thought was cool.

Sure enough, there was a thump and a scrape at his office door. It opened a crack and Ed stuck his head in.

“Come help, you bastard.”

Roy glanced up. “With _what?_ ”

He huffed, "I'm carrying—building stuff—for some guys. Hurry _,_ this stupid door is breaking my foot."

Roy rolled his eyes and went leisurely to the door. Ed stood in the hallway with his arms piled high with two-by-fours, alone. Roy peered down the hall.

"Where's your brother?"

"Who knows? Take this!" Ed fumbled half the lumber into Roy's arms, more than half. He took off down the hall and his mismatched footfalls echoed off the walls. "Follow me. They want it in the unfinished wing."

Roy hefted what he could over his shoulder. "May I ask why you're running errands for construction workers?"

"Because they asked me to! I wasn't raised by wolves."

"Could have fooled me."

"Get fucked, I'm plenty polite."

Roy felt sweat bead at his brow. Regret loomed. Ed turned sharply into the new corridor that was being built at the end of the hall, plastic sheeting flapping in his wake. The unfinished extension was bright with the afternoon sun, cooler than his stuffy office, and empty. Ed trotted to the far corner and dumped his armful of lumber down, and Roy did the same.

"It's been a pleasure running pointless errands with you, Fullmetal," Roy said dryly. "Next time, get your brother to help. He doesn't get tired."

"Wait," Ed said sharply. Roy turned.

"You have something heavier you'd like me to tote around? A table saw? Some lengths of industrial chain?"

He went quiet when he saw the intense look on Ed's face. He wasn't sure how to interpret it and didn't want to.

Ed said, "What are you doing after work?"

Roy went perfectly still. He felt sweat bloom on the back of his neck, his short hairs standing up. He glanced behind him to see who else Ed could possibly be talking to.

"Pardon me?"

Ed shifted his weight from foot to foot. He didn't look nervous, exactly, but he looked wary and on edge, like it was him who was being cornered and not Roy.

"Yeah, like… would you wanna… do something?"

Roy's mouth fell open. The world tilted on its axis.

“Do I ‘wanna do something’?”

"Yeah, y'know. I don't know. A drink."

"A drink, with you."

"Yeah."

Roy didn't understand where he was. He didn't know how he got from his office to the parallel universe he was in then, with his sweating palms, being asked out by a small child. He stared at Ed so hard his vision began to tunnel. He had to clear his throat before he spoke, and he spoke painfully slowly.

"I assume you're aware of this, but I'm worried you aren't, so I have to tell you: you are fifteen years old."

Ed scowled. "Thanks for the update. It don't mean at like a bar, just like… something…" He trailed off and Roy finished the sentence with the only logical option: _Something private. Quiet. Your place._

Roy devoured superhero comics when he was a child and often worried that someone out there, in real life, could read his mind like some villain in a story. When he was young, he would have some mean and intrusive thought, then pause and think: _If anyone's listening, I'm sorry for all that. I'm not bad, I didn’t mean it._ This moment reminded him of that: it was as if someone had dug around in his brain, pulled out the worst, most unforgivable thought he'd ever had, and put him on a trial for it. Something so bad he'd never realized he thought it at all, a possibility that scared him so badly that he didn't allow himself to even consider that it would come to light.

He had made a mistake. He didn't know where, but he must have. He couldn't believe that Ed would do this without having gotten some indicator—however infinitesimally small—that his advances were welcome.

"You're joking," he said quietly. Ed didn't crumple. He stood up taller.

"That's a no, then."

"Yes, that's a _no_ , Fullmetal." His voice shook, and as far as reasons went, anger was easiest to lean into. Anger was hot and bright and simple, and it fixed everything. If he berated Ed to within an inch of his life, if he obliterated him, he'd be better for it. He'd understand. "You are _unfathomably_ lucky that it's me you're talking to, because there are men on this base who would end your career, if not your _life_ , for suggesting to them what you just did to me."

Ed snorted and rolled his eyes. If he was hurt, he hid it well.

"You're overreacting. If you wanna say no, just—"

"Think very hard about what you just said. You've insinuated that, based on what you know of my character, I would be romantically interested in a teenage boy. You. Because you wouldn't have asked otherwise. Do you understand how that comes across?"

"Don't be a—"

"It's insanely disrespectful, and I don't mean because of our ranks and situation. It would be disrespectful between two humans anywhere, in any context."

"Oh, fucking _excuse_ me for thinking you might actually—"

"What," Roy barked, "did you think? Did you think I'd drop to my knees and fucking _service you,_ Fullmetal?"

It was if he'd slapped him.

"Fuck, I didn't—"

"You are _half my age!"_ Roy shouted before he checked himself. He lowered his voice to an incensed hiss. "And despite what you may think, you are not an adult. You do not look like an adult, you do not _act_ like an adult, and you couldn't be mistaken for one."

"I—"

"I'll spell it out so we don’t have to have this conversation again: I do _not_ see you as an equal. I do not consider you a prospective partner. Being smart does not change anything, nor does living a difficult life. You are not even mature _for your age._ Have I made myself clear?"

He could see in Ed’s wild eyes that he was seething. It was petty (Ed was rubbing off on him) but he wanted to fight him. It would be so easy and so good to make him spit and snarl and be allowed to, however dishonorably, have an outlet for his anger. If they fought, they would both get to play their childish game, and Roy would win. _He_ wasn't mature for his age, either. But Ed would cast that first stone, he knew it. Ed was young and dumb and couldn't process his feelings, he threw tantrums, he denied allegations, he twisted words around. Ed, now, would screech and blow the whole wing to bits and try to convince him that he was wrong.

Ed rolled his right shoulder in its socket until there was a metallic click and a locomotive sound, like pressure escaping. Roy could see the muscles in his jaw move as he clenched his teeth.

"Crystal fucking clear," he said. He didn't transmute anything or throw any punches. Hatred radiated off him like nothing else and he remained quiet, contemplative, still. Ed had directed that anger at him before, but never with such gravity. "Anything else, _sir?"_

This was the second time that Ed surprised him: he just took it.

"Don't tell a single soul about this," Roy said, ignoring his sarcasm. "You don't need me to tell you that."

Ed nodded, then walked past Roy with a wide berth and left the unfinished hallway, with its plastic walls and shafts of sunlight coming in through the ceiling. Roy stood there a few minutes longer and let humiliation and guilt swallow him whole.

—

Afterwards, every time Ed was in a room with him, he cringed visibly until he was out of that room. Where there used to be a hint of good nature, there was now acid and bile, and sometimes nothing at all; he avoided speaking to Roy altogether when he could. Things got easier as time dulled how awkward it was or, more accurately, as their lives became so complicated and dangerous that they couldn’t afford to be awkward anymore, but Roy understood the sacrifice he'd made. _Regret_ was a strong word and not one he used, but he could have been kinder. It wouldn't do either of them any good to bring it up now.

The next time Roy was in Central, loosened by whiskey, he told Hughes about it. He didn’t know how to process things without running them through Hughes like a filter for his conscience. Hughes never seemed to mind, and had been doing it so long that they were both used to the arrangement. Roy stumbled around it when he finally got it out.

"Fullmetal has a… He has feelings. For me."

There was a long pause. Longer than anything. It hadn't come up naturally, Roy had just said it during a lull. They sat in a tight booth in the back corner of a dusty wooden bar where late afternoon sun spilled in through the blinds. It was too early for them to be drinking.

Hughes asked, "How do you know?"

"He told me."

"You must've misunderstood."

Roy laughed quietly. "Christ, I wish. He all but propositioned me."

This pause was shorter. Hughes swirled his melting ice around in his glass.

"And what did _you_ do?"

"I'm going to pretend I'm not wildly insulted by you asking that." Roy flicked his thumb nail against his glass, his glove deadening the _tink tink tink_. "I screamed at him."

"Aw, jeez, Roy."

"He wasn't—he's so— _insufferable_. He's absolutely infuriating. I _had_ to, I had to make sure he knows…" He trailed off. "You should've heard what he said to me, Maes. Like I was a stranger at a bar. The fucking stones on that kid."

"That's no reason to yell at him, it's not his fault."

"Having a big head is his fault. It's all our faults. No one's ever told him _no_ and now he thinks he runs the world. Anyone else would shut up about it." He knocked back the rest of his drink. "They'd be ashamed of themselves. Appropriately so."

Hughes laughed. "He doesn't know what shame is. That's not all bad, is it? To be so confident so young?"

"Don't defend him, you didn't hear him. Everyone has a crush on their teacher, or drill sergeant, or _something_ as a child, but you don't—who would—" He was coming apart. He didn't want Hughes to see it. "I realize it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it's disgusting. He's brought it into my life and now I have to know about it, and think about it, and it's disgusting."

Hughes eyed him thoughtfully. "You're really bent out of shape over this, huh?"

"It's—it's—I'm appalled, I don't need this. Wouldn't you be?"

"I dunno, it's never come up.” He smiled. “Do you think he went for it because he knows you… y’know.”

Roy flushed. “No, I don’t know.”

Hughes leaned in with a wolfish grin.

"C'mon, we were in the same dorm building. I know you weren't _tutoring_ those guys."

Roy put his hands over his eyes.

"Maes, please. We've gone ten years without having this conversation and I'd like to go another ten."

"Well, you brought it up! It's topical now! Maybe the kid could sense it in you. Is that a thing? Pardon my ignorance, I’m not _of the life._ "

"If you're trying to make me feel better by joking around, don't."

"You _should_ feel better. It's not your fault that Ed made some insanely bold assumptions, you didn't do anything wrong."

"You can't know that. I… I worry I must have did something to him. Given him some kind of…"

"I sincerely doubt that you did." Hughes scrubbed his hair and sighed. "He just runs with things. You're not wrong about his ego. We could all do more to tug him back down to earth."

—

Just months later, Hughes was murdered and the number of people who knew how Ed felt about him dropped back to just him and Ed. After that, it felt like Roy didn’t sleep or eat for months and became a husk driven by grief and revenge. Ed was everywhere and told him nothing, and Roy’s neat little life unravelled completely.

In his personal all-consuming dark, after their gates were opened, there was a moment where hands grabbed at his arms, five hard fingers, five soft. He shut his eyes uselessly; there were no shapes of red dancing in his vision as if they were just closed, it was all black, nothing. There was a cheek against his and warm breath against his sore skin. A sound that was almost a laugh.

"I never thought you'd be here," Ed said into his ear, "at the end of it."

He leaned heavy against him as his legs gave out. There, with nothing, he didn't think anything of the closeness. He half forgot it as soon as it happened; human comfort, given when needed.

Ed retired as a state alchemist, obviously. They let him go without much ceremony for obvious reasons, but Hawkeye organized a very nice evening at a local restaurant, once Al was up and moving, that both brothers seemed to enjoy. Roy remembered that Ed kept his new right arm hidden in the sleeve of a big sweatshirt to hide how much smaller it was than his left. No one asked Ed what he would do with his new life free of alchemy. _A bird with clipped wings_ , Roy thought ruefully. If he hadn't burned a bridge on that hot summer day, he would've given anything to know how Ed felt about it all.

After Ed left the military, the brothers came and went from Central for a few years. Al was in Xing often for reasons that were never fully explained. And then eventually, as subtly as they'd worked their way into the lives and hearts of Roy's whole team, they left them. A year passed since they'd seen them, and then it was two. Roy stopped scanning the newspaper for mentions of their exploits after not seeing any for a while, unsure that the brothers still _did_ exploits. They became less like people in their memories and more inextricably linked to the horrible events of that year, and were spoken of the way people speak about devastating hurricanes after they pass through. Roy wondered abstractly where Ed had gone, without making any effort at all to find out.

  
  


**_— 1921, somewhere west of Esfakot, North Area —_ **

Roy thought about him as he trudged through knee-high snow with a dozen men under his command. His train of thought went: _It’s freezing cold. What if it were summer? Remember that one extremely hot summer in East City? The unfinished corridor. Edward._ It had been nearly seven years ago and Roy was still embarrassed when he remembered; embarrassed for Ed, embarrassed for himself. And there was a tiny part of him that had softened enough over time to be flattered: to date, Ed was probably his highest-profile suitor.

He squeezed his eyes shut hard, then opened them. Not the time.

He pulled out a glove, kept in a waterproof bag in his breast pocket, and snapped his fingers. Sparks danced across his face, what little was exposed between his hat and the warmer pulled up over his nose. He looked over his shoulder to the men stumbling behind him and snapped again, warming each in turn. There was too much moisture in the air for it to be effective and he spent as much energy warming their bodies as he did their guns. They nodded their thanks with their faces buried in caps and scarves.

 _“Just to the tree line head!”_ he yelled over the howling wind. “ _We’ll set up camp!”_

It was nearly dawn and they had been moving all night. They left Central two weeks ago on reports that Drachman forces were edging down around the mountains, swinging wide past Briggs through the thick, black forests to the east. Intelligence from the small towns that dotted the border put a group of Drachman soldiers moving southwest through the frozen bogs and marshes towards North City, and the plan was to proceed quietly towards them from the south and engage before they reached the cities. Roy was sent because his flame alchemy increased the team’s chances of survival in the cold from “zero” to “not zero.”

The team he had with him was good, he wouldn’t let them down. A man named Donald was up front, a wall of a human who was maybe the second best shot he’d ever seen. Behind him were Dennis, Wyat, Helen, their nervous comms man, Jaema, and others still. But Roy was so, so tired, they all were. Based on what they knew, they were supposed to have intercepted Drachman forces the night before and they hadn’t. Every moment that passed as night turned into dawn had Roy on pins and needles; either they’d gotten bad intel and the Drachmans weren’t where they thought they were, or they knew they were coming and _they_ were the ones being intercepted.

When they made it to the safety of the trees ahead, they would set up camp and rest. A tripwire around the perimeter would keep them safe from full-frontal attacks, and if anyone—

He heard the first bullet whiz by his cheek. He spun around to face his team.

_“Get down!”_

The second shot got him through the stomach.

He staggered forward. If he fell and got his glove wet, it was over for him. He heard the _rat-tat-tat_ of gunfire over his head and the squeak of boots in snow as a hot and pulsing pain bloomed through his entire body.

“In the trees!” Donald shouted. “Eleven o’clock! Keep low!”

He shoved a hand against the bullet wound; it didn’t feel wet, but was that good? He turned and snapped his fingers and the front row of trees a hundred yards away were set ablaze. He thought he heard screams. Gunfire sounded all around him, most of it, he hoped, from his team.

“Push forward!” he yelled. “Get out of this fucking snow!”

Shouts of assent. There was a hand on his back, yanking on his arm, pulling him up.

“Keep your hand in your jacket, General, we need—” Jaema paused as more guns rattled. “There’s a settlement or something just west of here, I don’t know what—they radioed earlier when we asked about supplies, it could just be a couple cabins, but they’ll have—Get _down_ , sir!”

He pulled Roy down. The thought of not being there for his men, now of all times, burned angry and hot through his gut. He popped up and spotted a few figures through the snow that was falling fast now, snapped his fingers, and everything around them turned to wet. The grass became so dry it burned, surrounded by snow. He saw Donald charge ahead, but the hand he had pressed to his stomach was soaked and warm now and he felt the heavy and irresistible lure of unconsciousness pull him under.

—

He only came to when his boots clacked on tile floor and not snow. An arm was shoved under his and there was yelling. It was finally warm. He didn’t understand where he was, only that he was somewhere else, and his nose and ears were on fire from the cold.

There was a face in his face, wide features and a baritone voice.

“He’s not lookin’ too hot. Are there others?”

“Just him. Please, _please_ —” Jaema.

His heavy layers were peeled off and he caught a glimpse of his snow-white winter fatigues soaked with blood. He was eased down onto something plush, a bed, a gurney, and finally his aching legs could rest. His feet were so cold they burned in agony; he struggled for his gloves and his hands were pushed gently away, _rest, sir, you’re safe here_.

He looked around for touchpoints, anything. The whitewashed walls were dirty and fluorescent lights hummed above him in cracked casings. There was a set of double doors at the end of the hall that opened both ways. It was a hospital, then, in the middle of nowhere.

The doors banged open. The doctor who stormed in was small and blond and Roy thought: _Twice in one day. Here of all places, I’m reminded of him._

His head lolled to the side and he tried to focus. The man who confronted Jaema before was speaking to the blond and Roy kept watching, eager for something to focus on besides his blinding pain.

He heard, "skirmish by the forest," and "slug went right through him."

The blond came up to his gurney. Looking up at him, Roy knew instantly, with a sharp breath—he didn't remind him of Ed, he _was_ Ed. He looked world-weary and grim but his eyes burned the same gold as they used to. His gaze was, as always, faintly accusatory; back in the day, Roy often thought of him as some rude imp of God, passing judgement and doling out punishments as he saw fit. His hair was scraped into a ponytail that trailed down his back. Blondish stubble marred his jaw.

"Oh," Ed said flatly. "You."

Over five years apart and it amounted to _oh, you_.

"It can’t be you," he said, in too much pain to trust himself. He had too much experience being in pain to not know what it did to you.

Ed said, "Focus on not dying, we can do the teary reunion later." He started to push his gurney and called out to the other man; the speed and urgency with which he moved made Roy nervous. "Ryder! Room eight's free?"

"For a _general_? You bet, boss."

Roy watched the lights scroll by on the ceiling. Ed leaned down near Roy's head as they hurried him down the hall. "Who knows I'm here?"

"No one, I didn't even—can we worry about my blood loss?"

"Always so demanding," Ed snorted. "We'll get you fixed up. If anyone gets to kill you, it’s gonna be me. God be damned if I'm gonna let some asshole with a gun do it."

The pain from his abdomen spread hot up his chest until his whole body ached. He felt himself shaking but couldn't stop. The gurney turned sharply through a doorway and he heard the sounds of people bustling around him.

"Alright, folks!" Ed announced loudly to the room. "Bullet wound! Abdomen! You know what we need here!"

The flurry of motion continued and Roy bobbed in and out of consciousness. He heard _carbon, iron,_ _whatever's in blood_ , objects being passed over his prone body, a light in his face. He was lifted by several hands from the gurney to something harder beneath him, and the crinkle of paper. Gentle hands peeled off his shirt.

He heard Ed's voice somewhere, not to him, "Remember to account for the damaged fatty tissue. Burst capillaries. We've got blood, but if we can make some, that's ideal. Hey." Louder. Roy opened his eyes to see Ed's face hanging over his. "This is gonna feel weird and hurt like hell, but it's better than the regular way." He grinned. "Trust me, I'm a doctor."

There was a flash of bluish light and Roy felt like his insides were being torn apart. He couldn't describe the feeling if he'd tried; something pulling, swelling, moving around inside him. He felt himself slipping under and went willingly to escape the pain.

—

He awoke in a bed in a small, gray room with one window and no medical equipment. The blinds on the window were shut and he couldn't tell what time it was. The door was glass and wire like a screen door and every few moments he would see someone walk by in the hallway outside.

It took him a minute to notice that he wasn't in pain, and he expected to be. He prodded his stomach gently; tenderness, but no sharp pain or bandages. They must have done some kind of medical alchemy but he didn't know the specifics and he'd never seen it used before, not like that.

He heard his voice out in the hall before he saw him. It was a little deeper than it had been when he was young, but it still carried that subtle Eastern twang.

"She's been here for three days, are you kidding me? We need the bed."

Another voice. "She says there's still pain in her left leg."

Ed made a guttural, frustrated sound. "Are we _sure?_ There's kind of no do-overs with this."

He came into the room with another person, a willowy figure with short, fair hair, wearing the same white coat that he was. The other doctor glanced at Roy and went to say something, but Ed continued.

"That's unless she wants Martin cutting her open to run quality control. But no one wants that, except maybe Martin." Ed puttered around the room, talking to his colleague and not looking at Roy. He walked around the far side of the bed and opened the curtains. It was darker outside than Roy thought and fat snowflakes fell steadily. "You could draft up something exploratory, we've done that before. Not necessarily mending but strengthening any gaps, in case we, I dunno, left out a shard of bone or something."

He had become a beautiful young man somewhere in those lost years and Roy felt sick at the realization. His eyes tracked obsessively over all the ways Ed was different and the same; his jaw was sharper and his shoulders were wider, he grew into those big doe eyes and he was taller, imagine that, but not by much. He still stood obsessively straight (for the added height, Roy always figured) and he had the same wry mouth, the same straight nose. He was a _vision_ , one Roy wished he hadn't seen.

Ed's colleague nodded at his words. "If nothing else, it'll make her feel heard."

His golden eyes finally landed on Roy.

"You're up."

It was surreal, seeing him so unexpectedly after so many years. He hardly recognized him without that braid and red duster.

"How long was I out?"

"Half a day. It’s lunch."

The other doctor came up to Roy's bed while Ed lingered at the foot and managed to look menacing.

The doctor said, "I'm Georgie. Nice to meet you, General."

"Likewise. Thank you for all this, but—where are my men?"

"You were the only one who was injured," they said. Ed chuckled and Roy ignored him. "I believe they're staying in town, or back at your camp. But we can talk about that later. First, how are you feeling?"

"Fine. Good," Roy said, still letting his eyes flick over to Ed. He couldn't stop. "A bit of tenderness, but nothing bad."

Georgie's brow furrowed. "That's not good, there shouldn't be any pain at all." They looked up at Ed. "Doc?"

Ed hummed thoughtfully. "Could be lots of things. If we missed any burn damage from the bullet as it went in or out, that would be a different type of tissue to reconstruct, and if we didn't do it, that's internal bleeding. If you feel good about it, you could get in there for a look and go from there."

Georgie nodded seriously. "I can do it."

"Cool. I'll grab the stuff." Ed pointed a finger at Roy. "Be nice."

Roy recoiled. "Wh—I'm always nice!"

Ed left the room and Roy's head buzzed with questions to ask Georgie about him before he could return and shut him up. He tried to decide which was more important, Ed's sudden re-entrance into his life or the strange medical alchemy they were doing.

Georgie beat him to it.

"You're Ed's friend?"

Roy laughed. "That would be generous. We used to work together."

They went to a cupboard against the wall and pulled out a big sheaf of paper and a small notebook.

"Oh? Working where?"

Roy froze. They knew he was in the military, they called him by his title. Where else would he have met Ed, if not when he was a state alchemist?

Unless they didn't know. Because Ed hadn't told them.

"At…" He floundered. He'd never done anything else, he hardly knew what civilian jobs looked like. "... a laboratory in Central. He was commissioned to do some work for my department."

"Very cool," Georgie said, clearly not thinking much of it. They sat at a chair and started to scribble arrays in the notebook. "It's a small world. With all these cars now, people are really getting around."

"They are," Roy agreed. "How long has Edward worked here? If you don't mind."

They looked up, deeply amused. _"Edward."_

Roy winced. How could Ed hide so much? He was stepping on his toes no matter what he said. He was lucky he hadn’t called him Fullmetal. "Ed," he corrected, and the sharp little name felt strange on his tongue.

Georgie laughed. "Funny. Well, I've known him for about a year, when I first came here. He opened the clinic about three years ago, last I heard, so he's been here since then at least."

Ed blundered back into the room with glass jars in his arms, full of strange substances.

"I think this is everything you'll need. Got an array?"

"I've got this." Georgie held up their notebook. "It should account for the work we've already done and identify any broken capillaries we missed. I figured there could be internal bleeding."

"Likely. It's good, get it down."

Georgie spread out the paper on the top of the cabinet and started to sketch on it with a piece of chalk. Ed's jars clinked loudly as he set them down. Seeing him with two flesh hands made Roy's heart jump. He had scars on the knuckles of his left that weren't on his right and there was dirt (blood? Something black) under the nails on both.

He did some quick math: Ed would be twenty-one or twenty-two, if he remembered right. Still fifteen years his junior, because time and space hadn't bent to his will before and weren't going to now.

Guilt hit him hard across the mouth because he shouldn't have been doing _age math_ upon meeting an old colleague after years apart _._ He was too fucking old to nickel and dime it, and Ed was… complicated. Fifteen or twenty-two, he was a snare trap of a human being and Roy had to know better. He _had_ to.

He watched Ed's ponytail swing as he weighed out little piles of substances into a metal bowl, and he worried that he did not, in fact, know better. Ed was a snare trap and he was a stupid rabbit who would die for a sprig of alfalfa.

Ed caught him looking. He expected a snide comment, but he just held his gaze for a long moment before turning back to his jars. This was a new Edward, he was quickly learning. Here, he was a private young man who left behind some secret life to open a magic hospital in the woods. Ed, not Edward. _Doc_.

Georgie finished their array and showed it to Ed, who made a few quick edits. They pulled a kind of tray from under the lip of Roy's bed, like a pull-out leaf on a dining room table. The array was placed on that, and then Ed unceremoniously dumped out the pile of whatever he'd been mixing.

Georgie asked, "Are you an alchemist, sir?"

Roy looked up. "Hm? Yes."

"Only alchemists seem to be interested in all this. Other patients just lie back and wait for it to be done."

Ed's glinting eyes landed on his. "Have you figured it out?"

"It's… just alchemy. Hyper-specific medical alchemy. You're breaking down damaged tissue and using materials to create new… body stuff. Correct?"

"Nailed it," Ed said. "It's crazy that it's never like this, eh? Traditional medical alchemy doesn't get into the actual reconstruction, not by supplying additional materials. So I just thought… we know what we're made of, so why not make more?"

"Those arrays are insanely complex." He leaned over and watched Georgie prepare to place their hands on the array under him, and he tensed involuntarily. "Your average alchemist wouldn't be able to account for the changes in composition between capillaries, tissues, fluids…"

"We're very fortunate to have Ed," Georgie said reverently. "Quiet now, and hold still."

Ed moved up the bed to Roy's other side. "Fortunate my ass. _You_ drew that."

Georgie ignored him. There was the flash of blue again and Roy flinched. It didn't hurt but he felt something moving somewhere and that was bad enough. It was indescribably strange.

"You came up with this," he said quietly to Ed.

"If you wanna think of it like that, sure. Everyone knows how now, I just taught 'em."

Roy leaned over to peer at the array. "How did you even _begin?_ It's extraordinary."

Ed shrugged. "I broke my leg a few years ago and hobbled to a town without a doctor, so I had to come up with something. And it's fucked that alchemy is only used for violence here. We've got so much to learn."

Roy looked up at him. He was watching Georgie focus on the array and his brow was drawn as if he were waiting for something to go wrong. He always looked serious, Roy remembered, but never so focused. An adolescence spent scrambling for his life must have prepared him for adulthood in a way that nothing else could have.

"It's been a while," Ed said idly, not looking at him. "What are you now, like fifty?"

"Shy of forty, you monster."

He cracked a smile. “Whatever. I see those grays.”

He was handsome. Edward Elric was _handsome._ How long had this been going on, up here in the tundra where Roy didn't know about it? He was mortified.

The blue light faded and Georgie huffed and sat back.

"How's that feel, sir?"

Ed said, "You don't have to call him _sir_ , George, he's not even in uniform."

Roy didn't argue with him. He prodded his abdomen. "No tenderness."

Georgie and Ed high fived over him. Georgie gathered up the paper and the spent jars and headed for the door.

"I'll go check on Mrs. Manus. You two catch up."

Ed sputtered. "Wait—"

Georgie slammed the door behind them and the two were left alone. Ed sighed and tightened his ponytail.

"One of your pups has been in the waiting room this whole time, so you'll probably have to scrape him off the ceiling. Skinny guy, curly hair?"

"Jaema," Roy said. "I hope he wasn't a problem."

"Nah, nah, nice guy. Just, y'know, nervous. No nose for alchemy." He leaned on the far wall of the small room. "I assume you're here because of the Drachmans."

Roy sat up. "You've seen them?"

"Yeah, they've been dropping in every few weeks all winter. They're fuckin’ gargoyles, fully kitted out. Last time they were here, two of ‘em took over the Maybury’s house for days."

"You saw _invading forces_ and didn't think to pick up the phone?"

Ed raised his eyebrows sharply.

"There was only a few of them and I’m _so sorry_ that I've been too busy reattaching severed fingers to make a long distance call. I haven't been up here jonesing for an opportunity to feed you military intel."

"I wasn't implying that you were."

Ed stared at him long and hard and Roy couldn't imagine what he had done to make him so hostile. Mention of the military? He'd always been touchy, but not about that. What had changed in their time apart?

Finally, Ed said, "Don't act like we're friends. We're not even on a first name basis."

Roy winced. Not _enough_ had changed, maybe.

"We could be. Life is long." He lay back in his bed and rubbed his brow. "You're awfully antagonistic for someone who hasn't seen me in years. Have I done something to you by proxy? Or maybe while I was unconscious?"

Ed groaned and shoved the heels of his hands against his eyes. His two human hands, ungloved. It was like Roy was looking at someone else.

“To be totally transparent, I don’t have a lot of great memories of you. As you can probably imagine.” He still had his hands in his eyes. “Wasn’t a great time in my life.”

He was perfectly right, but hearing it still made Roy’s heart _flub-dub_ out of sync. It was naive of him to think that Ed would just pop back up after all that and be fine, that his wax wings hadn’t melted.

“Nor mine.”

"Plus, you humiliated me for having a crush on you when I was a kid," Ed said to the floor. "It's not a big deal, but don't think I forgot."

Roy inhaled sharply. That was unexpected.

"I didn't think you'd forget."

"Did you think I'd still be mad?"

He hesitated. "I considered the possibility that you would still be mad."

It was the first time Roy had ever heard it out loud. _Having a crush on you_. Suddenly he was thirty again, an insomniac workaholic bore, his left ear sore from always being on the phone with Maes. Ed was still this Ed, this young and tired doctor who, if Roy knew anything about trauma, had trouble sleeping. Roy could only imagine what vices he’d come up with to deal with it and hoped they were better than what he’d done at his age.

Ed added, “That, and I spent a good month or whatever thinking you’d murdered Lieutenant Ross. I know you didn’t, but that kind of thing sticks around.”

It was nice of him to not bring up the thousands of people Roy had actually killed.

“So there are reasons not to be friends with me,” Roy said slowly. “Does that mean you won’t be _?”_

Ed groaned like he had when he heard someone was taking up an extra bed in the clinic. Like he was put-upon.

“It… It means I’m not on break and I’ve gotta go. You don’t have to stay, there’s no bed rest." He headed for the door, stopped, then looked at Roy. "I'm usually here 'til eight."

By the time Roy got it, Ed had already mostly left.

"I'll be here at eight!"

"There you go," he said, and disappeared into the hall.

Ed had gotten _charming_ while he was sequestered up here in the snow, too. Roy hated it.

—

Roy ambled into the waiting room and found Jaema anxiously reading a pamphlet on arthritis. He leapt out of his chair when he saw him.

"General! You're alright!"

"I'm fine, Jaema, thank you."

He looked around the room. There was a small window through which he could see a receptionist. Wooden benches dotted the space, most of which were empty. An old man and his wife sat near a potted plant at the back.

"An update, sir: everyone's at the inn in town. The snow has gotten too heavy for us to move back to the forest and Donald thought, in your absence, it would be best to remain here until it lets up."

Roy waved his hand. "Fine. Good call." He took his jacket from Jaema when he offered it, mysteriously free of blood stains. More alchemy? As they headed for the door, he said, "Fill me in on the confrontation with the Drachmans. After I was hit."

"Wait, wait—sir, are you really alright? When I saw you last, you were on death's door. Should you be up and moving?"

"I'm _fine_ , Jaema." He smacked himself in the stomach demonstratively. "They use a strange kind of medical alchemy, I've never seen anything like it. I'm one hundred percent, in just a few hours."

Jaema made a small sound of disagreement and held the door open for him. "I don't know, sir. I'm not sure about that quackery, to be perfectly honest. How do you know it's _effective_? There's a reason it's not done."

"Watch your tone, lieutenant," Roy snapped. "They're competent doctors pioneering a new field of medical alchemy and they deserve your respect. You're far too young to be so afraid of change."

Jaema looked away. "My apologies, General."

The snow was falling so quickly Roy could hardly see in front of him. The town that appeared nestled between the pine trees was a cluster of buildings with clapboard siding and metal roofs. There was a large building with a vaulted roof that looked like some kind of hall, groups of single-dwelling cabins, and paths had been carved crudely in the snow but it was falling too fast now for anyone to keep up; a man was shoveling near the town's centre and it looked futile.

Roy said, "Edw—the doctor shared that the Drachmans have been making trips past the border for some time now, with no kind intentions. Our intel may have been stale."

He couldn't see Jaema's face under his hood but he heard him make a noise of disgust.

"I'll radio North City immediately. They may have been ferrying in troops for months, who knows how big this has gotten."

"Get an ETA on how quickly they can get staffed up, and whether they're sending anyone up from Central. We'll move out as soon as the snow lets up." He thought of Edward. Off at eight. "Potentially tomorrow morning. No sense in heading out tonight."

An old man with giant eyebrows intercepted them as they pushed open the inn’s heavy wood doors. He was a head taller than Roy and draped in furs, and his heavily lined face stared sourly down at him.

“You must be General Mustang.” His voice was like a gravel driveway.

“I am.” Roy edged in enough to shut the door behind them against the howling wind. “And you are?”

Jaema jumped in. “Sir, this is Lyl. He runs the inn, and has been so generous as to allow us use of the common room to—”

“I run this _town_ , Lieutenant,” Lyl cut in, “and my generosity has its limits. General, how long are you planning on having your men crawling around here?”

“We’ll be gone when the snow lets up, sir. And let me thank you personally for allowing us the space. We’ll pay for everything, rest assured.”

Lyl squinted at him. “Folks are getting uneasy with all the troops around. And it’s not every day you see a _wildfire_ in this weather.”

“I apologize for the damage,” Roy said, fighting the urge to huff. “The doctor who runs your clinic shared that Drachman soldiers have been through the town recently, we’re tracking them. If we get things under control, they’ll stop paying your people visits.”

“Are you bargaining with me, General? I’m not allowing your men to stay in the hopes of getting military protection.”

“I wasn’t suggesting—”

“And don’t believe everything you hear, my boys got the situation with those soldiers under control. I don’t know what that fairy at the clinic told you, but he’s been up my ass for years. Wants to make me look bad, God only knows why.”

Roy wanted to see him _burn_.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said through his teeth. “Jaema? The common room?”

Jaema all but tugged on his sleeve to pull him away from Lyl. “This way, sir.”

—

Roy worried that telling his team that Ed was an old friend would jeopardize whatever smoke screen of privacy Ed had built in this sleepy winter town, so he said he had to check in with the doctor to make sure everything was alright with his wound. With that being said, his past was well enough known and Ed looked so distinct that anyone who had the pieces would put them together regardless of what he said or did.

He trudged through the driving snow from the inn to find the clinic still open. He stamped his boots on the rough mat inside the door, lowered his hood, and spotted Ed leaning against the receptionist's counter with his coat over his arm. He turned when he heard the door.

"Like clockwork," he said from across the room. He wore boxy jeans cinched with a belt and a gray sweatshirt tucked into them. His long parka was white, not red. To Roy, whose memory was stuck so many years in the past, it was like he was dressed up as someone else.

"I'm nothing if not punctual."

A giant man banged through the swinging doors at the end of the hall and it took a moment, but Roy placed him as one of the nurses who had loaded him onto the gurney when he first arrived. Ryder, Ed had called him.

"Military guy!" the man yelled, raising a meaty hand. His skin was dark and his hair was mop of curly black. "Doc said he was seein' someone tonight and I _knew_ it was you! Mister Popular’s always got folks coming through!"

Ed tried to cut him off before he got to Roy. "Ryder, come _on_ —"

Ryder ducked around him, sidled up to Roy and shook his hand hard. "Ryder Stalman, nice to meet you. I'm Doc's right hand man."

"That's not strictly true," Ed said, trying to shove them apart. "Ryder, get out of here, we're leaving."

"Roy Mustang," Roy said, dripping with enjoyment over Ed's obvious discomfort. "It's nice to see Ed's made so many friends up here, he always was a bit shy."

Ed wailed and tried to shove Ryder back. Ryder grinned and planted a hand on top of his head to keep him away.

"No shit! You his teacher or something?"

"His boss, technically. Back in the day."

"You were never my boss and _we're leaving!"_ Ed howled, swiping at Ryder. "Don't make me change my mind! And Ryder, go home!"

"I'm workin' tonight! _You_ go home!"

"I live here! _Agh!"_

Ryder shoved Ed away and Roy narrowly avoided making contact. Ed hastily pulled his jacket on as Ryder cackled and strolled off the way he came.

"Have fun! Mustang, do me a favour and get him to loosen up, he's killin’ us."

Ed pushed Roy towards the door and they stumbled out into the freezing night. Roy pulled his coat tight.

"He seems nice." He could barely keep the laughter out of his voice. Ed grunted.

"He's a piece of fucking work. He's lucky he's such a good alchemist, ‘cause he's also an asshole."

"Are all your colleagues alchemists?"

"Not all," Ed said, leading him off towards town. "There's a couple who are just real doctors or nurses, for stuff we can't fix. And some people are both."

"That makes sense." Roy bubbled with questions but they were trudging through knee-high snow in the near pitch black. There would be time. "Should I ask where you're taking me?"

"Town's only got one diner pub type of thing. My place isn't much for entertaining."

"You said you live at the clinic?"

"Above it. There's a block of apartments."

They soldiered on towards the pub in silence, leaning forward at a 45-degree angle to keep from blowing over in the wind. Ed in his white parka in all the snow looked like a spectre ahead of him, slipping in and out of view. It was easier once they were through the trees and into the town square, shoveled clear and lit by gas lamps that threw long, warm shadows over the cabins and white hills.

The pub was a welcome wall of heat when they stepped inside. A coat rack groaned under so many coats that it looked like a mountain of canvas and fur, and they added theirs to the pile. Thick wooden tables were arranged around the big room, all clustered around a giant bar on the back wall. Droopy vined plants hung from shelves near the ceiling and one wall was mirrored, which made the room seem cavernous. The patrons were largely old men hunched over giant steins of beer, save for a young couple in the corner and a family near the door. It smelled like age, cedar and sour beer.

"I haven’t been anywhere like this in a long time," Roy said, looking around. He smiled at the hardened bartender, who offered him something that was not quite a smile. He wished against logic that he'd brought his civvies. He'd left his inner jackets back at the inn, but the silhouette of his trousers and boots were unmistakably military.

"Less lush than wherever you get your luxe Central cocktails, I'm sure." Ed wandered over to a table at the back. "Don't ask for anything fancy, they won't make it."

Roy sat across from Ed. He could see the top of his own face over Ed's head in the mirrored wall behind him and it was unnerving. He looked tired. His hair was doing something weird. The black thermal layer he wore instead of his jacket was far too tight.

"I don't know where you got the idea that I'm fancy."

"Uh, from watching your general demeanour for the past ten years. I'm not wrong."

"And I'm multi-faceted." Roy picked up a menu that stood propped between a pepper grinder and hot sauce in the middle of the table. It was faintly damp. "Are we doing food?"

He almost added, joking, _or are we just finally getting that drink you wanted?_

Ed said, "I haven't eaten all day, we'd better be doing food."

"Figures that you wouldn't be taking care of yourself."

"Hey, I cook! I cook like nobody's business, I just didn't have time for lunch."

"Of course."

He looked up from the menu. Ed was rolling his eyes.

"Cooking is just alchemy, anyways. Changing matter, it's all science."

"You're preaching to the choir," Roy said, which got a chuckle out of Ed. "Do you like it up here?"

"Sure, as much as anywhere. The winter's not bad if you know how to prep."

"Is it always like this?"

"God, no, this counts as a storm. You've always had bad luck." Ed stood and tipped his chin. "We order at the bar."

Roy watched Ed as he spoke easily to the bartender. He was a strange creature. His features had grown strong and sharp—his jaw, his nose, his deep-set eyes—but they were at war with his long, golden hair, like something out of a fairy tale. The top of his head hardly reached Roy's nose. In the same way that he eschewed so many of society's rules, he operated as if gender didn't apply to him.

Roy got steak and a salad and allowed Ed to carry their massive pitcher of beer back to the table. Ed poured them both beer and Roy's had way too much head, which he figured was an intentional slight.

He asked, “You said you broke your leg and came up with this type of alchemy you’re using, but what made you pursue it?"

"What, medical stuff?"

"Yeah. Why open a clinic? Is it something you’re passionate about?”

Ed seemed to think about it as he took a giant swig of beer.

"Seizing a gap, I guess." He spread out his hands and said, without an ounce of good humour, "You know what they say. Those who can't do, teach."

Roy thought, more often than he would have imagined, about Ed's loss of alchemy. One of the greatest minds of their generation had been snatched from the field in adolescence, and whenever someone brought up a great feat of alchemical brilliance that someone else had done, Roy thought, _imagine what Fullmetal would be able to do now._

"That's crushing."

Ed sighed an exhausted sigh.

"I wanna say I'm used to it, but I'm not. I don't regret it, _obviously_ I don't, but it was, uh, an appropriate toll." He looked away, anxious. "I'm just starting to not clap my hands together anymore. For years there, I'd look like an idiot all the time."

Roy quirked a smile. "I'm sure you didn't."

"It was brutal. I'd see something broken—like a flower pot or car windshield or whatever—and I'd go _I'll help you, madame,_ all swish, and I'd clap my hands and just like… place them on the windshield. And nothing would happen. And it's too much to explain, so I'd just yell _I used to do alchemy_ and run off."

Before he finished, Roy was laughing so hard he had to cover his mouth. It was miserable and wonderful and he couldn't help it.

"I don't mean to laugh, I—"

"No, no, it's fine. It's hilarious."

Roy drank. The beer was bitter and sharp and cold on his tongue and even that first sip, the thought of it, lowered his inhibitions. He'd been _go go go_ for so long that this brief respite was heady and exciting.

"Where’s your illustrious brother these days?" he asked.

"Figuring out how to be in love with a Xingian princess," Ed said, only a bit sour. Roy raised his eyebrows.

"The little one?"

"The very same." Another huge swig. "I sound bitter. I'm not."

"Clearly."

"I'm not. It's just—he's young. You know. He's only twenty-ish. I mean, so am I, but it's a lot to be… I dunno. It's important that he's doing his own thing, in any case."

"Were you worried about him _not_ doing his own thing?"

"Kind of. Not that I think he's incapable of doing his own thing, but just that… it was…"

"About you," Roy finished, "for so long."

Ed sneered at him. "Did you come here to psychoanalyze me or what?"

"Not at all. But am I wrong?"

"Of course you're not, but shut up about it. He didn't have a _chance_ to make it about him, he didn't even have a face. He couldn't be the state alchemist, and one of us had to be."

"So you're worried he'd never grow into his own because he was too used to being your sidekick?"

"Get fucked, Mustang."

Roy held up his hands and spoke quickly. "He _wasn't_ just your sidekick, he was wonderful, he was always whole, but you know what I mean."

Ed deflated. Another gulp of beer. "Yeah. I know."

"Well, I'm glad to hear he's out on his own. You must miss him."

"So much that it's like there's a hole in my chest," Ed said, so startlingly sentimental that Roy didn't know what to say. He was so used to Ed being sullen and aggressive that hearing him express anything at all seemed strange. "We talk on the phone all the time. It's not so bad."

"Do you keep up with anyone else from the old days?”

Ed glowered at him. “It’s not like I’m a recluse.”

“Oh, please. I called you ‘Edward’ and Georgie looked at me as if I’d called you 'Reginald.’”

“I’m just extra casual now. I go by ‘Ed’ more.”

Roy put his elbows on the table and leaned in, lowering his voice.

“I also gather that they don’t know you were a state alchemist.”

Ed leaned in in kind. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

“I’m extremely well-versed in tact. Of course I didn’t.” He sighed. "What's your angle? Why hide?"

"Maybe you're still too far up the military's ass to know this, but being a state alchemist _sucks_. It's better now, but you're still a tool and a weapon. No one's clear on timelines or who did what, and I'd rather not be associated with the military at all after all that."

Knee-jerk anger pricked at Roy's fingers. Ed wasn't wrong, but he hated being told it. He still harboured a sick and howling grief over what he'd done and that no matter what he did going forward, he couldn't take it back.

He said, "It _is_ better now. It's always getting better."

Ed snorted. "People up here don't care about that. They've got no resources and no support. They sell the whole country lumber and get no support when their pipes freeze and run brown. I don't wanna be associated with the government that's letting them down."

His face was drawn and serious. He had always been a man of the people, and incurably empathetic. Roy smiled.

"Have you ever considered getting into politics?"

Ed pretended to gag. "Not on my goddamn life. All that schmoozing and fuckery, never saying what you really think. I couldn't do it."

"Well, I have no doubt that you'd skyrocket to the top in no time if you tried. You have a way of being, uh, in the public eye. Notable."

Ed groaned and rubbed his eyes.

"I'm tired of being notable."

"I hate to break it to you, but you're incapable of being un-notable."

"I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time back then. Or the right place. But I'm just a regular guy now."

"Are you kidding? Hidden up here in the snow, you've more or less accidentally broadened our country's collective knowledge of alchemy and how it can be used to help people."

"Aw, whatever."

Roy leaned in again. "Not whatever. You're saving lives without even trying. If you erased your past from this moment forward, you'd be in the news again in two years. You're permanently notable."

Ed shrunk back. "I don't _want_ to be."

"You could try not caring so much about your fellow man and the pursuit of excellence." Roy smiled. "But I don't think you can."

"I wish there was a switch I could flip to make me stop caring."

"No, you don't."

Ed offered him a chagrined smile in return. "Sure, but I dunno. I could be a schlubby guy who watches daytime TV and runs a gas station. That seems less stressful." He leaned his chair back on two legs. "I had to stop wearing red because people would always recognize me."

"It's a shame. You've got summer colouring, all this white and gray doesn't suit you."

Ed scowled. He looked charmingly put off by any talk of his appearance.

“ _Anyways_. To answer your question, I talk to some people. Zampano was up here last year and now he sends me letters from wherever he goes.”

“That’s precious.”

“And I hear from Havoc and Armstrong sometimes. Hawkeye calls on my birthday.”

Roy raised his eyebrows. “You talk to Riza?”

Ed hid behind another long pull of beer.

“I guess she didn’t tell you that.”

Riza broke up with Roy three years ago, which Ed must have heard from someone because he didn't ask him how she was doing immediately upon seeing him, which everyone who hadn’t heard did. When Roy was still crawling his way out of the depression that followed their breakup, he would reply with a bitter _you’ll have to ask her,_ and now that he had recovered, he just said, _she’s stellar_.

“She hasn’t mentioned it.”

“Do you talk much?”

“Oh, constantly.”

“You’re _friends?”_

“As much as we can be, yes.”

“Damn. Is that hard?”

“Not most of the time." Another sip. The beer was vinegary and weak but it was growing on him. "It’s much less painful to figure out how to keep a loved one in your life than to cut them out of it as if they were dead.”

Ed’s mouth opened and closed once. Unasked questions. Roy realized that if Ed had really seen him as an adult back then, he might have seen him and Riza as an Adult Couple in the way that he saw his aunt and her partners when he was a child: adults were just _together_ , they didn’t have feelings, and they were static in a way that meant they couldn’t break up. It was tough to understand when they did.

“What happened?” Ed asked, as polite as he ever got. “You guys seemed solid.”

Roy sighed. It was a conversation he'd only had with close friends, but a practiced one nonetheless.

"I think we learned that devotion isn't love, unfortunately. Or, not that kind of love." He ran a finger through the condensation on his glass. "I'd die for her if given half a reason, but I didn't like her friends. She didn't like my stories. Our shared interests dwindled. That old tale."

He looked up and Ed was watching him carefully. Scrutinizing, maybe.

He added, "Not to over-share. Although if the intent of this evening is to become friends, this is pretty indicative of friendship with me."

"Getting maudlin about your exes after…" Ed peered across the table at his glass. "... half a beer?"

Roy tipped his head back and chugged the rest of his beer. Ed was laughing when he slammed it back down on the table.

He pointed at him and said, "That's _one_ beer. Keep up."

—

The second and third beers went by almost unnoticed and Roy was startled to learn, somewhere around the time he had the last bites of his not-altogether-appalling steak, that he was having fun. Talking to Ed was no longer pulling words out of a cranky teenager, but having real conversations with a strange and funny young man. It felt as if they _were_ old friends, though he kept reminding himself that it wasn't true.

A lanky server came by to take their empty plates and asked, in a squeaky pubescent drawl, "'Nother pitcher, boys?"

Roy looked at Ed, who was already looking at him.

"Up to you," Roy said, which was incredibly dumb and still impossible not to say. "What time do you work tomorrow?"

"None of your goddamn business." Ed fished a crumpled bill from his pocket and handed it to the kid. "Another, thanks."

Roy shook his head and laughed. "Wildly irresponsible. You're in charge of saving lives and you're out cavorting until the wee hours."

"It's not even late! You're the one with the tough job, _general._ My job is easy."

"Is it?"

"Well, no, it's stressful as shit. But everyone's so self-sufficient now, Georgie basically runs the place. I strut around and put out fires and pay the bills, which I can do with a hangover."

"Are things usually on fire? What kind of injuries do you deal with, generally?"

The server brought another pitcher and Ed poured them both a glass as he spoke.

"It's a logging town, so it's mostly accidents. Felled trees, chainsaws, dehydration, frostbite. Otherwise, not much. All anyone does here is fight, fuck and drink."

The evening was getting to the point where Roy felt drunk, daring and stupid. He grinned.

"Does that _anyone_ include you?"

Ed wagged his hand and gave him this funny, coy smile. "Two out of three."

He must have gotten a look on his face, because Ed laughed at him. He scowled and took a swig of his beer and Ed kept laughing.

"You're such a prude," Ed said. "Either I got some bad gossip back in the day or you're getting crotchety."

He couldn't decide which was more likely: Ed running a for-profit fighting ring with the town's backwater thugs, or Ed fucking his way through the population as a way to pass the time. He realized he didn't know him well enough to even guess.

"I'm not dignifying that with a response," he said, which Ed seemed to enjoy.

He had a nice smile, Roy thought. It was toothy and mean and, for some reason, completely charming.

This was followed by a second thought, one that crashed into him like a tidal wave: he had been infatuated before, and he couldn't pretend that he didn't recognize the feeling. He kept looking at Ed's hands. He was trying very hard to make him laugh. He already dreaded the moment their evening together would end. It was _textbook._ He was an idiot for not seeing it sooner. He rolled the thought around in his head and sucked on it like a hard candy: Edward Elric of all people, leading him around by the nose. Appalling. Also gut-wrenchingly exciting, in a way he didn't let himself examine too closely. He told himself he wouldn’t do this.

“I thought you’d look older, by the way,” Ed said, which didn't help

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I didn’t know how old you were back then, so I didn’t know how old you’d be now. I figured older. And you're younger." His eyes flicked away from Roy's and back. "You're also unnecessarily shredded, if you don't mind me saying."

His eyes dropped again. Roy watched his gaze rove over his chest and it was more thrilling than it had any right to be.

"What makes it unnecessary?"

"Your alchemy isn't physical, you just snap your fingers. Why work out?"

Roy smiled and shrugged. "Posturing. Vanity. An attempt to look imposing to my many enemies. Etcetera."

Ed's eyes snapped up to his.

"You're such a jerk."

"Being a general is still military, hand to hand combat does come up. You have to be able to disable without killing, and I'd rather not cause scarring."

"So, shoot them in the kneecaps! I've seen you carry a gun."

"Well if nothing else, being fit looks good. That's not reason enough?"

Ed stared at him with his jaw set for long enough to make it uncomfortable. Not mad but thoughtful, almost. His eyes flicked down to Roy's chest, arms, back up.

"I don't think about that kind of thing," he said finally. He was almost, almost smiling.

Roy sat up straight. Were they flirting? Was this a _spark?_

His head spun. He had to be reading into it and seeing something that wasn't there. They hadn't seen each other in half a decade and it was laughable to assume that Ed carried a torch for him based on a silly childhood crush. If there were _something_ , Roy wouldn't have had to twist his arm to get dinner. He was just hundreds of miles from home, in the pit of a dry spell. Ed was beautiful. Forbidden fruit. A snare trap. Roy was an idiot.

“So down-to-earth,” he said, laughing. “Not vain like the rest of us plebians.”

“Who’s got time to be vain?” Ed said, finishing his beer. “There are so many better things I can be a dick about.”

“It’s a never-ending list,” Roy agreed.

Ed glanced at something behind him, then visibly deflated. Roy turned around to see what he was looking at and the place was almost empty, but there was a big clock on the wall.

Ed said, "We'd better wrap this up soon. I'm scheduled for the asscrack of dawn tomorrow."

"You're joking."

“I wish.”

“Why did you get another pitcher? You could have gone home! I’d understand.”

Ed looked embarrassed, which was new for him. “I was having fun.”

Roy laughed. He expected to spend the evening, if he was lucky, getting to a place where Ed didn’t openly resent him. He hadn’t expected to have the most fun he’d had in months, or to feel much of anything besides guilt and nostalgia.

“You sound as surprised as I feel,” he said.

“Didn’t hide it well, eh?”

“Not particularly.” Roy finished his beer. “Well, drink up. I’ll walk you home.”

Their jackets were two of the only ones left on the coat rack and they were still wet when they pulled them on. The night was inky black and swirling with snow and they walked side by side as much as the path carved in the snow drifts allowed.

Asking for his phone number seemed too obvious, although with anyone else, it wouldn't have been. He could ask for his address or find it out from someone the clinic or inn, but the thought of waiting months to exchange a few paltry letters—if Ed even wrote back—wasn't enough.

Ed said, "I think I was allowed to assume that we wouldn't have fun."

Roy was lost in his thoughts. "Sorry?"

"We've never had a real conversation, so I didn't know. You're not how I thought you'd be."

"No?"

"You're regular. I thought you'd be all…" He snapped a cartoonish salute and clicked his heels together and Roy laughed and laughed.

"I have _never_ been like that!"

"Sure, but you’ve moved up the ranks since I last saw you, and I thought maybe it bred the open contempt out of you. Made you doughy and gray."

Roy shoved him. "I'll show you doughy and gray, you brat."

Ed shoved him back, knocking his shoulder against his. "Yeah?"

"I've been dying to see what kind of a fight you put up when your arm isn't a shiv."

Ed looked up at him, eyes blazing. "Yeah?"

They both stanced up, laughing. Roy had grown up with close quarters military combat while Ed fought with open hands, using whatever you'd call the high-flying martial arts he learned from his mentor. Roy had only seen him fight while he could still use alchemy and it was a miasma of kicks and claps and pillars of stone like a golem's hands rising out of the ground. Fighting Ed himself and not the forces of nature he once had at his disposal was so exciting. Or maybe Roy was just drunk.

"This is stupid," he said, but he was grinning.

"Afraid to get beat, hotshot?" Ed took a swipe at him and he blocked it with his forearm. "I spar with Ryder, if you're worried I'm out of practice."

He didn't have a chance to respond before Ed struck at him again and stepped in close. It was hard to fight when he was laughing. He kicked up snow and blocked, blocked again, got Ed with a quick jab under the ribs. He kept going to snap his fingers as a reflex. Ed kneed him in the gut.

"Son of a—"

Ed dropped low and caught him behind the knees with a sweeping metal leg. While he was off balance, he shoved him over like a lumberjack felling a tree and Roy fell to the ground in an explosion of snow. He tried to leap to his feet and Ed crammed a fistful of snow into his face, cackling. Roy shoved him hard and he toppled over. He tried to pin him, but Ed snatched and rolled and then Roy was on his back, winded. Ed's ponytail swung over his shoulder and hit him on the cheek. His hands were fisted in the front of Roy's jacket and it was so _physical_ , he was so close and warm and heavy and bright.

Roy realized, too late, that he was hard. He pushed his hips up into Ed's without thinking and Ed's breath stuttered. Then his eyes got wide. Everything was suddenly quiet.

"You're fucking kidding me," Ed croaked. He looked down, then at Roy, and then anywhere _but_ Roy. "Is this an accident, or—or _something?”_

The fact that he was asking meant he knew there was a possibility that Roy was hard because of him specifically, because of the context and not just the physicality. That the answer was _it's something._

Roy knew he could lie and that there was a decent chance that Ed would believe him. He was surprised to find that he didn't want to lie.

"It's something," he said quietly, staring up at him. He didn't dare move or even blink. He held his breath until his head was pounding with it. "I'm sorry," he added, because he was; he apologized sparingly so it would count the most when he did. By the little sound Ed made, it worked, or it infuriated him. He rolled off him and flopped onto his back in a spray of snow.

"Is that why you're here?"

"No!"

"Did you lie to me?"

" _No!_ I had no idea I'd find you here and even if I did, I wouldn't…" He trailed off, unable to find a good way to phrase _poach you for a long-belated fuck._

"You've gotta be kidding me," Ed said again.

“I sincerely wish that I was.”

Ed was quiet for a long time. Roy wanted to get up but didn’t know what to say to excuse himself and his breath still burned in his lungs. He stared up at the inky black sky between the crowning trees, dotted with more stars than he ever could have seen in Central.

“Since when?” Ed asked.

“Concretely, for the past twelve hours. Beyond that… I don’t know." Roy sat up and brushed snow from his hair. "Don't make me think too hard about it."

Ed gurgled. "For fuck's sake."

"I know."

The world spun a bit from all their beer. He didn't dare look at Ed but he looked at his boots sunk into the snow next to his own. There had to be something he could say to fix this, some way to express himself that made whatever it was that he wanted sound less complex, less icky.

Ed said, "I gotta go." He hauled himself clumsily to his feet. He didn't even look at Roy as he started to walk away. "I'm not doing this. I'll see you later."

"You won't, actually!" Roy called after him, stumbling up. "Let me—"

"I'll be in Central in the spring. Summer. I don't know."

"Edward—"

"Don't follow me!" Ed yelled, not turning around, not slowing a bit. He charged back towards the clinic and was soon lost in the trees.

Roy stood for a moment longer, then tipped over onto his back in the snow. He thought of the teenaged Ed who had gone out on a limb to connect with him and got brutally shot down, and understood for the first time what it must have felt like and the reality of what he did.

—

He wandered back to the inn, lost in his thoughts. Ed was being the bigger man. He was doing the right thing. There was no universe in which them getting together in any capacity wasn't a giant mess: he'd be risking his career if anyone found out, and Ed his carefully cultivated private life, and people _always_ found out. For his own sanity, he had to believe that it wasn't worth trying. He _had_ to.

Twenty-four hours ago, Ed had been nothing but a half-formed memory of a strange time in his life. He was an old friend at best, and at worst, a famous person he used to know. Why was it different now?

He couldn't pretend that he didn't know why. It was different because they'd had their first real conversation as equals and it had been a good one. Because there was a spark, as much as Roy didn't want to admit it. Because if he had stumbled upon Ed at that pub without already knowing him the way he did, he would have gotten his number and called him the very next day with zero hesitation.

He saw a flickering light around the side of the inn, and voices. He followed it and found his squad gathered around a not-insignificant campfire, sitting on logs and boughs, talking joyously and drinking foamy beer out of giant steins. His flicker of annoyance at the unprofessionalism was doused quickly; he was glad they were getting along and having something to think about besides armed conflict. And after two pitchers, he had no leg to stand on.

No one noticed him slink out of the trees. He sidled up next to Donald, who sat apart from the others resting his hulking frame against the back wall of the inn. He barely jumped when he noticed him.

"You alright, sir? Jaema said you went to the clinic."

Ed wanted a private life. He didn't want anything to do with Roy or what Roy represented.

He said, "Do you think you've ever… missed opportunities in your life, Donald? Big ones?"

Donald sighed a giant sigh like a steam engine.

“I sure do, sir. You wanna hear about it?”

“Please.”

“Well. When I was still a cadet, _the_ Commodore Berringer came by our podunk compound and saw me running drills and offered me a position on a squad in Central, just like that. Would've skipped the rest of the academy. But I said no 'cause I didn't want to leave my girl.”

Roy chuckled. "A tale as old as time."

"Of course, I was just a kid. Her an' I broke it off three months later and I spent another three years at the academy proving myself. Didn't make it to Central for another five." He looked down at Roy. "Something like that, sir?"

Roy sighed down at his clasped hands. "Almost the opposite."

Donald was quiet for a moment, no doubt deciding what was and wasn't appropriate to ask of his commanding officer.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Always."

The big man shuffled around for a moment. "That means you got somebody you're leaving behind, maybe?"

"Maybe," Roy agreed.

There was another silence. Donald picked at his nails.

"Well. Not to suggest that a guy like you needs advice from a guy like me, but no matter if it's a person or a thing… if I could go back to when I was a cadet and talk to myself…" He sniffed loudly. "I'd tell him that missin' one of those big opportunities in life makes you feel pretty empty, after. Pretty stupid."

—

The cold bit at Roy's cheeks as he trudged through the dark towards the clinic. He noticed for the first time the row of lighted windows on the second storey of the squat building and took a shoveled path around the side that led to a door. It was unlocked and opened onto a narrow stairwell of pink carpeted stairs. He climbed.

The hallway at the top was dotted with shoe racks and doormats, its walls wood-paneled like everything else in town. There were no nameplates above the apartment numbers and he considered yelling Ed's name as he charged down the hallway like the end of some romantic movie, but he doubted that Ed would find being shouted at as charming as the women in those films did. Instead, he crept past each door until he found Ed's worn leather boots and big white jacket dripping with melting snow outside suite number six.

He swallowed his pride and whatever else had stopped him from pursuing a good thing in the past, and knocked on the door. He resisted the nervous reflex to stand at attention.

After a moment, there was the _click clack_ of a sliding chain lock and Ed's face appeared in a crack between the door and the frame. First he looked surprised, and then moved into anger.

"What part of _I'm not doing this_ wasn't clear? Get lost!"

Roy stuck his foot in the door.

"Are you scared?"

Ed sputtered. "Christ, you don't give up! I’m fucking _tired!_ I have to get up early, and I want to go to bed, and I _don't want to talk about this!"_

He seethed up at Roy and Roy held his flashing eyes for a moment, then removed his foot from the doorway.

Ed didn't slam the door. He flung it open and stormed into his apartment.

 _Venting, then_ , Roy thought.

He stepped cautiously inside. It was a single small room, dimly lit, with a bed on one side and a kitchenette on the other. Piles of books sat on the nightstand, the little square dining table, and at the foot of the bed. The window was half blocked with snow piled on the sill.

"I don't like it any more than you do," Roy said, shutting the door behind him. "I just think we should talk about it."

"What's there to talk about?" Ed spat.

Roy's heart hammered in his chest. There had to be a good way to say it, there had to be something he could say to calm him down.

"You… used to have feelings for me. Or still do." He watched Ed's back go tense. "And I…"

"You fucking _what_ , Mustang?" Ed yelled, whirling around. "You can't just drop into my life and act like everything's okay, you prick! We're not old war buddies! That wasn't _fun_ for me! I'm _still_ working out all the ways that I'm fucked up because of what happened, and having you here with your fuckin'—your buddy-buddy bullshit and your _smiles_ , saying all this shit—"

"I didn't mean to—"

"You never mean to do anything! You just _happen_ _to_ come here, you just _happen_ to have that little wrestling match, and—"

"The world doesn't revolve around you!" Roy snapped. "Don't think I spent the past five years agonizing over you. You think everything I do has this insane, malicious intent, but I don't know what you don't tell me. I'm not trying to _put one over_ on you, I'm not—"

Ed got up in his face. He couldn't be the one to step back first.

"How can I believe you? I don't _know_ you, I don't—"

Roy, against his better judgement, shoved Ed in the chest.

"For us to go through everything we went through together and have you say you _don't know me_ says more about you than me," he hissed, temper flaring. "You are the most pigheaded person I've ever met and I don't know who told you to get into all this _machismo_ bullshit, but you need to grow up."

" _I_ need to grow up? That's fucking rich, coming from you. You and your fucking mind games—"

"You're acting like a spoiled brat. I can't read your mind, and you expect me to—to jump through these hoops? To fucking _prove_ myself? I've done enough proving myself, thank you very much, and if it's still not enough, I don't know what to say. Why don't you just _tell_ me what you want, because you are the most infuriating—"

Ed grabbed his face and crushed their mouths together.

Roy froze for a moment as his brain struggled to keep up with the excruciating context switch.

He thought: a smarter, stronger man with better morals would have gently eased Ed back and had a difficult but necessary conversation about their feelings and intent and history.

Roy rarely considered himself to be any of those things. He grabbed Ed's ass and kissed him back, _devoured_ him.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd been kissed like that, like the world was crumbling around them, like he was going off to war—like, he figured, two people who had been dancing around each other for far longer than either would admit. Spit, fire, brimstone, thumbs digging into his cheeks.

He waited for him to get his faculties back and push him away, but he kept going. He kissed him so hard he nearly stumbled back and Roy just let him. He felt so maddeningly good, his broad shoulders and narrow waist and hard arms an expanse he could spend eternity letting his hands explore. His coat fell to the floor in a wet pile. He let himself be kissed, sick and lucky and endlessly, tirelessly wanting. He slid a hand under his shirt and his skin was like butter.

He lifted him up to sit on the table against the wall and stood between his legs. Ed dragged him in with his heels, his hands pulling at his shirt, looking for closer, closer. Roy was a man possessed; he leaned into his warmth, his soft hair, his skin, the way he smelled, the feel of his mismatched legs curling around him.

He wrestled back control for long enough to consider the implications. What came after? What happened to the friendship he was trying to build? What did a snow-bound roll in the hay mean for someone you'd known for so long?

He scraped together enough brain cells to mumble, "We can't do this."

Ed bit his lip and said, "Fuck me," which was much, much more persuasive.

Roy tugged Ed's hair tie free and buried his face in his neck, felt the tangled silk on his cheek, bit hard where his neck met his shoulder. Ed made a sound that tore through him. He hopped off the table and fumbled with his belt, his head bent so Roy couldn't see his face. He turned around. Roy shoved his pants down and spat in his palm in lieu of anything better, unwilling to wait after however long it was that they’d been waiting. Ed gasped and shuddered and he was _inside him_ and he couldn't think anymore.

He could hardly breathe, nothing had ever been so good. He held his hips and fucked him into the table, not thinking, not existing anywhere at all beyond the tight, unbearable pleasure. There was just the creak of the wood, the slap of their skin, his rushing breath and Ed's half-swallowed cries, fate and destiny cackling at them. He'd die if he came first. He wrapped his fingers around him and he was hot and heavy in his hand. Ed groaned and pushed into his fist. He knocked his legs wider with his knee. Ed's nails scraped on the table and cold sweat pricked at the back of his neck. He pushed his sweatshirt up and smoothed a hand over the peaks and valleys of muscle in his back and felt them shift and pull under him as he fucked him. His throat got tight, his legs buckled and he came, glorious and dumb, his face buried in the back of Ed’s neck. Ed came into his fist with his nails digging into Roy’s forearm.

Slowly, everything crashed down around him. He gulped for breath, his chest plastered to Ed's back. His fingers still clutched at his bare hips and he ran a hand under his shirt and up his chest, digging his fingers in. He felt so _good._ They poured years of frustration and affection and loss into a single crushing embrace.

"Stay," Roy said into his hair. "I know you have a habit of… leaving. Places, and people. But…"

He trailed off. Ed choked and laughed.

"And you don't?"

"I'll stay."

He didn't know what it meant. He wouldn't stay in that little forestry town, he couldn't. Ed knew that. But regardless, he'd _stay_.

He pulled out and Ed hissed at him. He didn't want to let him go, so unsure of whether he would ever let him do this again, whether it meant anything, what on earth he would say next and how Ed would take it. He felt perfect in his arms and if it was the last time he'd be there, he wanted to savour it.

He finally stepped back. Ed hiked up his jeans and it took him a lifetime to turn around and look at him. His face was flushed and he was breathing hard and Roy regretted more than anything that they hadn't done it in a way where he could watch him. He couldn't place his expression—surprised, nervous, maybe grimacing _._

"Okay," he said.

Roy didn't know what to do with that. He wanted to kiss him. Every cell in his body was screaming at him to kiss him.

"Okay," he said back, breathless. Not going in for the kiss.

"I'm gonna..." Ed trailed off, unwilling to give shape to the undignified realities of sex. He slid to the door, pausing to shove his feet into slippers, and went into the hall.

A shared washroom, Roy figured. Alone, he sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. He was still sweating and felt hot, heavy and swollen in his clothes and boots.

 _You unbelievable jackass_ , he thought, staring down at his hands. _You're in over your head._

The room smelled indescribably like Ed, a quality to his hair and skin and clothes that didn't smell like anything other than him. Roy peered at the spines of the books on his nightstand. _Advanced Biophysical Alchemy. Michel Avendano's Big Book of Edible Herbs and Fungi (2nd ed., 1919). The Mysterious Affair at Styles._ An old mug of water and Ed's heavy metal watch sat next to the stack of books, and on the floor in front of the nightstand sat a little yellow telephone. Ed _lived_ here. It was dizzying.

Not knowing what else to do, he went to the sink, wet a washcloth and cleaned cum off the floor boards by the table. He rinsed the cloth and left it hanging on the counter, then sat back down, feeling stupid. He listened nervously to footsteps in the hall.

Ed didn't look at him as he came back into the room. He toed off his slippers and started to go to the sink, but looked down at the floor by the table and stopped.

"You cleaned up."

Roy drew up his shoulders. "I'm polite."

"Fuck-standing-up polite."

"Polite, not _romantic_."

They looked at each other for a tense and upsetting handful of seconds, Roy sitting on the edge of the bed, Ed standing across the small room, all lit up in orange from the lamp-glow. Roy couldn't stop thinking about what they'd done and still felt slow and loopy in his post-coital haze, trying to stave off the sappy feelings that were his, and everyone's, biological imperative after sex. He had no illusions about whether this was the time or place. But he _was_ romantic. He didn't know what he wanted.

He went with: "We should talk."

Ed snorted. "You think?"

He wondered if Ed's brain hormones were reaching out to his own, begging him to curl up on the bed with his head on his chest, or if he was alone in that. Ed visibly struggled with whether to sit on the bed next to Roy or to remain leaning on the table across the room. It was as awkward as Roy expected it to be. In the end, he slunk across the room like a wary animal and perched on the bed next to Roy. Conveniently, that meant he wasn't looking at him. He picked at a fraying seam on the knee of his jeans as he spoke.

"Don't pretend there's anything more than there is here. We have… tension."

"Chemistry."

"Tension," Ed insisted, "and it's tension that’s been resolved. We finally had sex and now we can go live our lives and deny it if anyone asks.”

“Who would ever ask us that?”

“You’re missing the point." Ed glanced over at him. "Aren't you here chasing Drachmans? You're all healed up, when are you leaving?"

Roy winced. "In the morning."

"Right, so none of this matters." His voice was just shy of snippy _._ "I'll see you next time I’m in Central like five years from now, and you’ll have a wife and a baby and you’ll act like you didn’t raw me during a snowstorm that one time.”

"Is that where you think I'll be in five years?"

"I think military men are supposed to have families," Ed said. "And I think you're very good at doing what you're supposed to do. Or like… what you _have_ to do."

Roy rubbed his eyes and left his hands there. "That was uncalled for."

"Is assuming you want a wife and kids _rude?”_

"No. Yes. I don't know." He uncovered his face and looked at Ed. "I don't know what I want. Clearly."

Ed looked, in a word: tense.

"Me neither," he said quietly.

He'd combed his hair in the bathroom and now had it tucked neatly behind his ears. It fell in a golden curtain over his shoulders. If nothing else, Roy was relieved to finally look at him— _really_ look—without having to hide it. He had a sharp nose and strangely masculine eyebrows; Roy didn't know what it meant to have masculine eyebrows, but Ed had them. His Adam's apple jutted out with a plucky, boyish charm. Roy could have drowned in him. He didn't remember being so besotted with him while they were at the bar, but sex probably hadn't helped.

He asked, "Do you… like me? In any measurable way?"

Ed groaned and flopped onto his back on the bed. His knee rested against Roy's and it was all Roy could think about.

"Does it matter?"

"Call me a sap, but yes. I assume that if you just wanted to get laid, you'd find someone… simpler."

There was a long, long silence. Quiet like a carpeted hallway, like fresh snow. Roy held his breath. What did ‘like’ mean? Should he have said something else? Was there a better way to phrase _do you see anything in me at all?_

"It's too much," Ed said to the ceiling. "All of it. You. Me. It's huge and gross and… I don't know. I can't imagine being able to make it fun. Or even okay."

Roy turned around. Ed's hair was spread out on his unkempt quilt like a halo.

"We could try again. Start fresh."

"You of all people know there's no _fresh_. Neither of us are fresh anymore."

"So, we figure out how to move forward anyways. Un-fresh. Rottenly."

"Loaded with baggage, you mean. "

"If you want to be negative about it, yes." Roy sighed and lay down next to him, propped up on an elbow and carefully, strategically, not touching him. "I can leave if you'd like."

"No," Ed said. Nothing else.

"I should stay?" Roy ventured.

"Yes."

He wasn’t quite looking Roy in the eye, his gaze falling closer to his chest, his throat, anywhere but his face. He was still tense—not upset, but not loopy and lovesick either. They were lying so close Roy could feel his breath on his arm.

“So, we have tonight, then.”

“Theoretically.” Ed raised his eyebrows. “What do you want to do with it?”

 _Lots_ , Roy thought, but it all boiled down to: _Convince you, for the second time today, that I'm worth spending some time on._

“Let’s stay up. Give me as many hours as possible to get to know you before I have to leave."

Ed's eyebrows raised even higher. "Like a sleepover."

"Yes."

"You're trying to court me."

"I'm trying to get to know you."

He squinted up at Roy, his cogs turning, no doubt weighing the pros and cons of not kicking Roy out and going to bed immediately.

"Alright," he said slowly, his tone implying a sly kind of 'what's your angle here?' "I'm not opposed."

"Good." His heart was racing for no good reason. It was just _Edward_ but it was so different now and it was dizzying, more exciting than he had the guts to admit. "I told you, I'm not trying to trick you, or whatever it is you think I'm doing. I'm just…" Time ticked by excruciatingly slow. His tongue felt heavy. "... interested in you. As it turns out."

Ed sighed. Not what he expected.

"What now?" Ed asked. It only took Roy a second.

"Can I kiss you?"

He felt like a child. They'd kissed earlier but none of that was intimate, it was lust and frustration and fumes. A kiss was vulnerable and neither of them were good at that.

Still, Ed nodded, so Roy leaned down and kissed him. The angle was funny but it was soft and slow and heat licked at his throat anyways. It hadn't gotten any less exciting or any less good. Ed nipped his lip and it made his breath stutter. He pulled back and Ed laughed against his lips. His nose pressed against his cheek and they stayed there, alarmingly close.

"So weird," Ed mumbled.

"This?"

"Yeah. You."

Roy laughed. He started to run his hand up Ed's arm and Ed drew gently away, nudged him aside and sat up.

"I'll need fortifications if we're staying up all night." He went to the cupboards above the sink and started opening them. "Coffee?"

"Sure. Thank you."

He rooted through a cupboard and pulled out a giant glass bottle of liquor. "Whiskey in that coffee?"

" _Yes._ You angel."

Ed grinned at him. It was such a nice smile.

They didn't say much as he puttered around the kitchen; pulling out a coffee press, measuring grounds, grabbing two misshapen and poorly painted ceramic mugs. While the kettle heated on the stove, Ed went to a closet at the far end of the room.

"If we're staying up, I'm at least getting comfy," he said as he rooted through clothes.

"I assume you'd offer me something to wear, but…"

"If you're suggesting that my clothes wouldn't fit you, they'd fit you _perfectly,_ you jerk."

"Try me."

Ed threw a pair of sweatpants at him. He took his pants off—Ed watched him hungrily, which was nice—and tried to pull the new pants on. It didn't go well. Ed scoffed.

"Those are old ones, so they're smaller. And you can't wear my new ones, I'm wearing them."

Roy stepped out of the pants and held them out to Ed. "Why would your old ones be smaller? You can't still be growing."

"Men can grow until they're twenty-one and I'm barely twenty-two, so that's not _so_ unbelievable! And it's true!"

"Don't remind me that you're only twenty-two."

"I bet you know exactly how old I am, you freak." Ed stormed over and snatched the sweatpants out of his hands. "Fine, sit in your wet snow pants, see if I care."

"Or." Roy sat on the bed in just his underwear, smiling. "We _really_ get to know each other."

"Don't peacock, Mustang."

Roy peeled off his shirt and Ed's eyes roved over him, lingering on the expanse of scar tissue on the side of his abdomen that he'd learned to live with for almost a decade.

"It's cold in here, we'll freeze." Ed's resolve was cracking. Roy kept smiling up at him.

"You've got a stove," he said, and nodded towards the small wood stove in the corner of the room.

"It's dying, and I'm all out of wood."

"Mm. I can make it last." He got up off the bed, went to where his jacket lay crumpled by the door and pulled out his gloves. He crouched again in front of the stove. "As long as you've got something in here, it'll work."

He pulled on a glove and clapped his hands. The ashes and coals and small amount of burnable wood lit up with a brilliant flame. Ed was peering over his shoulder.

"How are you doing that? It was almost out."

Roy shut the stove's little metal door. "Controlling combustion rates. It's a secret. Don't worry about it."

When Roy turned around, Ed was naked. He sat on the floor in front of the stove and watched him go to the bed, throw a blanket over his shoulders, then return to the kitchen. The _thunk_ of his metal foot made the old wooden floorboards shake. Roy lifted his hips and pulled off his briefs, and Ed pretended not to notice.

"Are we talking a little whiskey in the coffee or a lot?" Ed asked.

"A reasonable amount."

He put more than that into the bottom of both mugs, saying nothing. He kept glancing at Roy as he rummaged around the kitchen.

"What?" Roy asked.

Ed busied himself with the coffee press.

"I didn't see it before. It's nice."

Roy looked down at his dick and back up. "It's _nice._ "

"What, you want me to write a sonnet? It's a nice dick. Get over yourself."

He very pointedly didn't look at him after that. Roy watched him from in front of the fire, mostly his calves and arms and gaps of skin in the wide weave of the blanket he'd thrown over his shoulders. Even that was intoxicating.

He said, "It's a mark of trust and intimacy to see someone's flaccid penis."

Ed went, " _Ugh_."

"I mean it! You don't get that with one night stands. You're either hard and in the throes of it, or you're covered up, or you're dressed." Roy cocked his head. "They go from being these big, virile things to something little and floppy. It's funny."

"Hey!"

"Not just you, I mean everyone. It's vulnerable. I'm saying it's nice."

"You're insufferable."

"I think I'm very sufferable."

Ed didn't dignify that with a response. He poured the finished coffee into their mugs and handed one to Roy, then stood awkwardly for a moment, looking down at him.

So they weren't going to talk about it, Roy thought. That was fine. He could be hip and cool and not talk about his feelings, if that's what Ed wanted. They would have a fun, nude sleepover, and then he'd leave and not see Ed again for months or maybe years. And that was perfectly fine to Roy. It certainly didn't make him feel like he had something to prove.

He sipped from his mug. It was a jackhammer of whiskey and coffee, sour and bitter and bright.

"So, what do you do to entertain around here?" Roy asked. "For people who aren't me."

Ed slurped his drink and seemed to barely suppress a grimace. "I have backgammon."

"Not chess?"

"I'm not stupid enough to play chess against you, you said we'd have fun."

Roy laughed. "Backgammon it is, then. Bring it in front of the fire."

Ed pulled a battered leather backgammon case from under his bed, took a second blanket from the bed and sat on the floor across from Roy. He lobbed the blanket at Roy, who lay it over his lap. The backgammon case smelled like dust and age when Ed opened it, and each little piece, made of some hard white and black resin, was worn smooth. He watched him set up both sides of the board—maybe assuming Roy wouldn't know how—and everything was electric. Roy crackled with energy, absorbed in the way Ed's fingers moved, the sharp bones of his wrists, the curve of muscle in his forearms. It was like he was seeing in real life something he'd only heard described. He had no way of knowing whether it was mutual, or what it meant.

"You know how to play?" Ed asked. Roy jolted.

"What?"

“Backgammon.”

Ed smiled at him. He ignored it. "I played with my aunt when I was a boy. She said it was one of the few things I'd have to talk to older men about that wasn't lecherous or violent."

"She's right. The only other thing that falls into that category is sports."

Roy made a face and Ed laughed. They each won a game and drank a mug of coffee and whiskey that way, sitting wrapped in blankets in front of the wood stove. By the time they started their tie-breaking game, Roy had convinced himself so fully that he was playing it cool that he didn’t realize he cared anymore.

Ed was beating him by a wide margin. Roy had never been good at backgammon.

"This is supposed to be a fast-paced game," Ed said, teasing.

"You're distracting."

Ed leaned back on his hands. A stretch of smooth skin and a tumble of honeyed hair over his shoulder.

"You think I'm pretty?" he said in a drawling voice.

"Upsettingly so." Roy moved one piece six, one piece two. "What part of having sex with you left that unclear?"

"Just wanted to hear you say it." Ed opened his knees a little wider. A subtle taunt. "Do you do this often?"

"Backgammon?" Roy joked.

"Sex with men." Ed shook his dice and rolled. "I thought I'd know about it if you did."

"I've been very careful in making sure that you and everyone _don't_ know. Only with strangers. Trysts. No one who would reasonably know who I am."

"How's _that_ going?"

Roy scowled at him. "Fun and emotionally dissatisfying. Is that what you want to hear?"

"No. I don't want you to be sad."

"News to me."

"Oh, come on, I like you plenty." He moved his pieces with no hesitation. "So, why the secrecy? I thought we were living in a modern society or whatever."

Roy chewed on that. Why _was_ it a secret, one that only Riza—once, Hughes—and now Ed, knew? Where did his quiet, painful embarrassment over it come from? Was his concept of masculinity that fragile, and more importantly, why did Ed seem to be handling it so well in himself where Roy had always struggled?

He landed on: "It's… unbecoming of a military officer."

"What does _that_ mean?"

"It means it's not done," Roy snapped. "There are rules and I care enough about my future to follow them."

"At what cost, though? Being closeted your whole life?"

Roy shrugged uncomfortably. "I like women, too."

"Good for you. But what if you fell for a guy? You'd break it off so you could _follow rules?”_

Roy looked at him long and hard. Edward Elric in his natural habitat, waving away generations of tight-lipped discrimination with a flick of his wrist.

 _What if indeed,_ Roy thought ruefully.

"I would make considerations," he said.

Ed scoffed. "I know for a fact that you don't care about rules. You're making excuses."

"Well, they're my excuses to make. And it hasn't come up yet."

Ed laughed at him. "Coward."

Roy let it go because he was good like that, and because examining his feelings on it was depressing him. _Clack clack,_ he moved his pieces. They weren’t good moves.

"I need another drink if I'm going to take this loss gracefully." He stood, taking his mug with him. His blanket fell to the floor. "Can I get you anything?"

"Another, thanks," Ed said, handing him his mug. He watched him set the kettle to boil again, then lay back on the floor and propped himself up on an elbow. His eyes stayed on Roy but he said nothing, like he was waiting for something besides another drink. It looked like ‘getting to know each other’ meant politely pretending that they didn’t want want to fuck. There was something sweet about it.

Roy tried, "Can I help you?"

Ed made a face that was more or less a grimace.

“You just…” He let out a heavy breath. “Look… good."

He gave compliments like it physically pained him. Roy laughed.

"Glad you think so."

"I never thought I'd see you naked. It's a weird new reality to live in."

"Isn't it, though?" He leaned on the counter and crossed his arms. “Do you like it?”

Ed nodded. He pointed at the scarring on Roy's abdomen. "That was from…"

"Mhm. Your brother told you about that, I assume."

"In excruciating detail. I think he _still_ thinks you're a superhero." Ed paused. "Also very unhinged, but. Potato-potahto."

It was strange to talk about it so flippantly now, but time and success made everything easier in hindsight. Roy pulled the kettle from the stove before it started to screech and filled the press.

"Speaking of your brother—will you tell him? About this."

"Probably. He's not gonna get it, though."

"What's there to get?"

Ed mulled it over.

"What I see in you, after so long. He thought I was an idiot for liking you when I was a kid and he'll think I'm a _huge_ idiot when he finds out I still do."

Roy looked at him over his shoulder. It was so casually spoken that he almost missed it—and, if he wasn't being self-deprecating and obtuse, it was already obvious through Ed's actions—but there it was: Ed liked him. In whatever way that meant to him. Roy bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling and turned back to the coffee.

"Can't imagine why he'd think that."

Ed barked a laugh.

"The first time we met, you called me a self-pitying cripple, I think? And then you screamed in my face. If we can both get over that and still like you, he can get over this."

Roy would never forget stepping into the old Elric home and seeing the array on the floor and so, so much blood. He compartmentalized it a bit, and it wasn't often that he remembered that the little boy in the wheelchair he met that day was the same Edward he knew later.

"You remember that."

"It's not something you forget. And then later, you blackmailed me."

Roy smiled. "You have a good memory."

“You stood out.” Ed rolled onto his back on the cold floor. "I can't believe blackmailing a kid wasn't a red flag. I'm a loser."

Coffee done and poured, whiskey added, Roy carried the mugs back to their blanket pile, set Ed's near his side of the board and sat back down.

"You were a country bumpkin. It's only to be expected that you were blinded by my charm."

"You were the first 'grown-up'—" Ed did air quotes, "—to talk to me like an adult. I'd never been worth blackmail before."

Their game seemed forgotten and Roy was in no hurry to lose a second time. He burned his tongue on his new coffee.

"You've been extremely generous in your interpretations of our past."

Ed closed his eyes and folded his hands over his stomach. "Maybe I'm making up for yelling at you earlier."

Roy had nearly forgotten about that in the wake of the sex that came after the yelling.

"I get yelled at all the time, it's like white noise to me now." He weighed his next words carefully, remembering the fight and everything before it. "And, also. I never apologized to you, earlier. For how I acted when you… told me. Back then."

That made Ed sit up. He shrugged at Roy and as far as shrugs went, it seemed genuinely uncaring.

"It doesn't matter. You weren't wrong about any of it."

"Maybe not, but I didn't have to scream at you."

"You didn't," Ed agreed, "but I get it. Now seems like an okay time for me to start batting my lashes at you, and even now it's a little iffy. Age fifteen was not a good time."

"An objectively awful time."

Ed tried to pick up his coffee, learned that it was scalding and shot back. He sighed.

"I know. Obviously I knew. I didn't think you'd be such an asshole about it, but still. Did you think I thought you'd _take me up on it?"_

Roy had never considered another possibility.

"You propositioned me knowing I'd say _no?”_

"Yes! Christ, of course I didn't think you'd be into it." Ed rubbed his eyes. He looked embarrassed, maybe for the first time since Roy had known him. "I just couldn't stop thinking about it. You. I said something because if I heard you shoot me down, I could stop being delusional and hormonal. You can't _logic_ your way out of stuff like that, you have to…" He seemed to lose his way.

"Get obliterated," Roy supplied.

“Exactly. Get reduced to rubble, so your brain can't supply any more tantalizing ‘what ifs’.”

It was a surprisingly adult concept for a fifteen-year-old to have had: self-immolation as a kind of self-defense.

"That's a bold move."

"I dunno, I was mad. You're supposed to marry the girl next door, not fantasize about the guy you hate." He picked at his nails. "Couldn't figure out what was wrong with me."

Roy wondered if that was a direct reference to a very real girl next door or if he was speaking figuratively.

"You know nothing is wrong with you."

Ed shrugged. "Sure, now, maybe. Try telling that to a kid."

Roy hesitated on the next one, long enough for Ed to take a wary sip of his coffee.

"You hated me?"

Another shrug.

"In the vague, amorphous sense, I guess so, yeah. I didn't _know_ you so I couldn't hate you for real, but I hated being told to do things, which you did a lot. And you were horrible to me."

"Was I? I thought we had a fun little dynamic going on."

"We didn't."

"Well, I'm sorry for misreading the situation." Roy looked down at his hands and they looked old. Slack skin around the knuckles reddened by the cold, ridged fingernails cut square. "If it helps, you really did a number on me."

"What?"

"Confronting me. Hearing you say all that, when you did. Never in my life has anyone put me off balance like that."

Ed turned that over for a moment, like he knew, or sensed it.

"Not because you actually…"

" _No_." Roy made a frustrated sound. "But I thought I'd… led you on."

Guilt flickered across Ed's features until he schooled it neatly away.

All he said was, "Ah." Anything else would have been too much. He shook his head and pushed his hair back over his shoulder. "This is heavy."

"Very."

They let that hang between them in a horrible, pregnant pause. Finally, Ed spoke.

"If you're trying to distract me from the game, it won't work, I want a clean win."

Roy let go of his breath, grateful. "You haven't won yet."

"So optimistic."

So they returned to their game and Roy tried to yank his mind back into the present. Ed sat with one leg outstretched next to the board and his metal toes brushed against Roy's thigh over and over again. Roy realized he probably didn't notice and couldn't feel that he was doing it. He didn't feel the need to tell him. It was nice. If he was reading Ed right, he wasn't interested in the game any more than he was, but couldn't think of anything to talk about that wasn't horny or depressing. The second whiskey-coffee was helping, though.

"The owner of the inn sure hates you," he said, a stab in the dark.

"Lyl? Obviously."

"If you were anyone else I'd be worried that you didn't know he had a problem with you, but you've always been very 'in the know' about that. The problem is usually _you_."

"Hey! Do you know how hard I have to try to cause property damage these days? It's different."

He rolled a three and a two and was forced to move into a bad position. Roy smiled.

"What did you do to him?"

"Still you assume it's me! Did you talk to the guy?"

"Yes, and I wanted to strangle him. But you're telling me you didn't do _anything?"_

Ed sucked his teeth.

"I... might have fucked his brother last year."

Roy beamed at him. “You didn’t!”

“I didn’t know who he was! He showed up at the bar and I jumped on the chance to bed someone I don’t have to see every goddamn day.”

“You have truly blossomed. Having sex with the mayor's brother out of spite."

They were making these long, circuitous loops into physicality and sex. It hadn't been enough, earlier, and they both kept edging back towards it.

"Did he tell you he's the mayor? Because he's not, Old Lady Jenkins is the mayor. And I didn't know he was his brother! Spite didn't come into it!"

"You couldn't tell he was Lyl's brother? The man is… distinctive."

Ed picked up his coffee and slurped it. "You're not thinking about who could be whose brother when you're cruising."

"Well, I appreciate your rampant disregard for authority nonetheless."

Over the rim of his cup, Ed's eyes lit up. He set the mug down and swallowed hard.

"Since we're two people with a rampant disregard for authority and very little to do—wanna go on a field trip?"

Roy squinted at him. "Where?"

"Don't worry about it, it'll be fun."

Roy looked around the room for a clock and didn't find one. "It must be two in the morning."

"You're gonna let a fake concept like _time_ tell you when to have fun?" He downed the rest of his coffee and leapt to his feet. "Get dressed, we're going out."

Roy struggled to his feet, his knees cracking. "We shouldn't go near the inn. If anyone…"

"No need to be ashamed of me, it's pitch black out."

"I'm lying to my men about where I am, it's not—"

"Don't waste your good excuses on me. You'll need 'em if we get caught."

Roy was too curious to argue with him. He pulled on his briefs and snow-wet pants as Ed rummaged around in his closet again.

"Are those long johns?" he asked as Ed pulled on what were clearly long johns.

"I don't know if you noticed, but it's _cold_ , you flaming bitch." He knocked on his left leg. "This thing saps heat like you wouldn't believe. Even with the special metals, it burns when I touch it."

"Like licking a flagpole."

"Exactly like licking a flagpole."

Roy wondered whether Ed would let him lick his metal leg, if he asked. He didn't particularly want to, but he wanted to know if he was allowed.

Once they were dressed, he followed Ed out into the inky night, colder than he remembered. It had stopped snowing and the buzz of whiskey through his veins made him giddy and warm. As far as he could tell in all the dark, they weren't heading back into town.

"Where are we going?"

Ed whispered, "That's on a need-to-know basis, cadet," mirth bubbling in his voice. "Keep it down, we're trespassing."

Roy was concerned that no part of him pulled away from that. Was that kind of trust a good thing or a bad thing? He'd let Ed lead him off a cliff.

The ground started to slope up under their feet, their boots slipping on icy stones and roots. Thick cedar trees rose up on either side of the path and somewhere between the branches, far to their right, there was a light. As it neared, Roy made out the angular shapes of a large and opulent cabin in the dark, surrounded by trees and dense, low shrubs. They were edging past it, several yards away and climbing. He reached out, grabbed Ed's arm and pulled him back against his chest with an inelegant thump.

"Are we _breaking and entering?"_ he hissed.

"Only on his land," Ed whispered back. He tipped his head up to look at Roy, but it was too dark to see. "Lyl has a hot spring in the back of his property. Not near the house."

"But it's on his property?"

"You can't fence in nature. C'mon."

He took off carefully down the wooded path, a grayish smudge in the all the black, and Roy followed. It smelled cold, sharp and smoky, cedar and ozone, and not being able to see created a strange sense of isolation. He was very aware of his breathing. He kept glancing at the retreating glow of Lyl's cabin as they climbed up behind it. He started to hear water trickling faintly from somewhere, and the trees thinned. The snow at their feet turned to wet rocks and grass and he didn't see the spring until they were nearly on top of it. Half of it was under a shoddy wooden cover and half was steaming into the night air. Ed turned to look at him, still just shapes. His teeth flashed as he smiled.

"You like?"

"It's beautiful," Roy whispered, glancing down at the angles of Lyl's roof through the trees below. "Have you been here before?"

"I couldn't find anyone who'd sneak in with me."

Ed's voice was closer. Roy turned towards him and was met with a soft, warm mouth on his own.

He made a quiet noise of surprise and let his eyes fall shut. Ed slipped a hot hand into the collar of his coat. It was a kiss with the heat of promise and in the snow-covered silence, all he could hear was the thudding of his own heart.

Ed lingered close when they broke apart, whiskey tang on his breath.

"Take your clothes off."

The closeness was a physical ache in his chest.

"As you wish," he said, only half joking.

There was a clunk and a crunch of snow as Ed pushed the cover back, a swish of fabric as his clothes fell to the ground. It was so cold Roy's bare skin burned and he found the spring by its radiant heat alone. He put a foot in; it was surprisingly deep. Ed held his arm.

"Don't slip, old man," Ed said in his ear. "You don't want me to explain this at the clinic."

The heat burned worse than the cold, but he got used to it. They sunk into the water up to their shoulders and Ed made a thoroughly debauched groan.

"This is exactly as good as I wanted it to be," he said in hushed tones. They sat close, perched on stones that felt as though they'd been arranged in a kind of bench, flat-ish on top. The ground sloped away underfoot into the unknown depths of the spring.

"Heavenly," he agreed. He twisted around and ran a hand blindly over the dead grass and dirt that ringed the water's edge. "If we can find something to spark, I can make us a light."

"They might see it from the house."

"I want to see you."

He heard Ed sigh behind him. He found a small, dry stone and handed it to him. Ed leaned over him to ready it above another stone. The feel of his wet shoulder against his chest drove him wild.

"Spark it when I clap. You have to hit it at a—"

"You think I don't know how to start a fire?"

Roy rolled his eyes to no one. Ed struck the stone expertly, a spark leapt into the night and Roy clapped his hands. A wisp of grass caught fire and stayed lit, not seeming to burn down at all.

"Huh." Ed stayed leaning over him. "Since when do you do party tricks?"

"Since a certain someone inspired me to see if my alchemy could do something other than destroy," Roy said lightly, as if it weren't the biggest thing in the world. It must have gotten to Ed, because he didn't say anything back.

The ball of flame cast just enough light that he could make out his face, so close to his own. He looked perfect in the yellow light. It was mind-numbingly annoying that sneaking into this spring was one of the most romantic situations he'd ever been in, and not only was it not his idea, it was _Edward Elric's_. Fate had a disgusting sense of humour.

He took Ed's hand and pressed his lips to his work-roughened palm, his illustrious right hand.

"Congratulations on this, by the way." His lips moved against his skin. Ed huffed, almost a laugh.

"I look God in the fucking eye and you toss me a _congrats_."

Roy kissed the heel of his palm, then his wrist.

"If I were surprised you got it back, it would mean I doubted you at some point. Which I didn't."

He kissed the wet skin at the inside of his forearm, twice, up towards the crook of his arm. Ed seemed extremely interested in his progress.

"Good," he said absently. His free hand floated underwater to rest gingerly on Roy's leg. Roy kissed his impossibly smooth shoulder, then the craggy scar from his automail port, then his neck, and Ed let him.

Roy ran his nose up his jaw and under his ear. His hands slid up his arms. "Is it still weird?"

He heard him swallow. His heart beat hard in his chest, pressed to his own.

"Less so," Ed whispered, hoarse. He turned his cheek towards him. "Mustang…"

"You're killing me, it's _Roy._ "

He found his mouth in the dark and kissed him hard, different than before, deeper. Ed sunk into him and ran his hands up his chest, taking a shuddering breath. He was a good kisser, as infuriating as that was; he kissed like he was having an argument and it was intoxicating to be drawn in like that. Borderline offensive. Roy slipped his hands down his waist and dragged him closer, and they spent an untold amount of time there, making out like nothing else mattered, both freezing cold and burning hot.

Roy eased back for a breath and Ed tried to duck back in to keep kissing him. Roy laughed.

"Eager."

Ed shoved him back and glided across the small spring, his face red. "Like you're not."

"I didn't say I wasn't."

Ed stretched his arms out against the stones on the opposite side of the spring and they spent a spell just looking at each other.

"I keep thinking of how I can scare you off," Ed said, "but I don't think I can. I've never thought that about _anyone_ before."

"You said yourself, I don’t know you very well. There must be something."

"You already know the things that might make someone run. And you're not."

It never occurred to him that Ed would hide as much of himself as _he_ did, but of course that was the case. Ed may have had a cleaner conscience, but they’d both seen things they couldn’t unsee.

"I'm not," Roy agreed, hesitant to say anything more flowery and declarative. There would be time.

Ed all but purred, "You have _no_ idea how attractive that is."

Everything Ed said—everything he did—was so perfectly seductive to him that his first knee-jerk thought was that Ed was making fun of him. Somehow, he learned what Roy liked and was using it to play this little game. That kind of chemistry couldn't be genuine, he thought, and God help them both if it was. He was so hard it hurt. He swam across the spring in a stroke and stopped between Ed's splayed knees.

"You obviously can't help it. I'm your type, it seems like."

Ed's hands slipped almost hesitantly up his sides. "Don't flatter yourself, I don't have a type."

"I think it's pretty obvious. Young prodigy has a troubled relationship with his father, seeks the company of older men…"

Ed put his hands on his shoulders and shoved his head underwater and it burned hot in his ears and nose. When he emerged, he pulled him into a rough kiss and Ed laughed against his lips.

" _Ugh,_ you taste like pond water—"

He wound his arms around him and slid his hands up his wet back. There was a fire between them that burned up the slowness of earlier and made everything fast and urgent and hard. Roy lifted him into his lap, weightless in the water, and dragged him against him.

"Ed—"

"Shh."

Ed rolled his hips and started to rut against him. Pleasure shot up his spine and Ed dug his hands into the wet hair at his nape; he was flatteringly hard and the slide of his dick against his own was maddening. He made soft sounds into his mouth when he kissed him, clearly trying his best not to. His skin was a thousand degrees in the hot spring. Every kiss felt like a competition and he had to remind himself that it wasn't, not really. He wondered if Ed knew that, and exactly when they'd become rivals.

"Hey, hey—" He nudged his face back with his cheek. "Not here. Let's go."

A metal foot curled around his calf.

" _Yes_ here. I'm not waiting."

"You are. I want… a bed. Space. Time." Roy bit his lower lip and tugged on it. "We're doing this right."

Ed pulled back and in the low light he could just make out his bemused expression, like he wasn't sure what _right_ entailed but was excited to find out. Roy wondered if anyone had ever fucked him thoroughly—properly—and if not, he was honoured to be the first. He'd make sure he hardly knew his own name by the end of it.

There was a wooden bang from the foot of the hill, followed by an earth-splitting bellow that rattled their ears.

" _Who's up there?"_ Lyl shouted over the crunch of underbrush as he struggled to hike the slope. _"You are TRESPASSING on PRIVATE PROPERTY and you have fifteen seconds until I get up there and show you the back of my hand!"_

"Oh, shit," Ed laughed, but Roy hardly heard him. He leapt out of the spring and tried to pull his pants, boots and jacket on over his wet body. Ed did the same and nearly fell back in the water, struggling to keep his laughter in. Lyl grunted with exertion trying to climb the hill.

"You kids are in a _world_ of trouble when I get up there! Don't you move!"

 _"Kids?"_ Roy hissed. Ed grabbed his arm.

"Hurry, down the other side!"

He took off running, stepping deftly over roots and fallen boughs; without Roy's light, it was pitch black again and he let himself be pulled along. Getting back down to level ground was more of a slide than a climb, ice nearly all the way, and they could hear Lyl at the crest of the hill cursing as he banged around with the cover on the spring. They didn't stop running until they had vaulted up the stairs to Ed's apartment, where Roy doubled over, breathing hard and choking on laughter.

"You _menace_ ," he managed.

Ed's key clicked in the lock. "Wasn't your fault. As an impressionable young man, you're easily persuaded."

He looked up. Ed was looking back at him, the door half open, smiling. His cheeks were flushed from the cold and the run and the bottom half of his hair was wet from the spring. He was glowing. There was something intimate about experiencing physical exertion with someone, too, Roy decided; a fight, an escape, anything. Or, worse, maybe everything just felt intimate then. Because he was experiencing _feelings_ and making excuses. The thought gnawed at him, as it had all night.

" _Young_ ," he said. "If you're trying to butter me up, you're going to have to be more clever than that."

Ed's laugh trailed behind him into the apartment and Roy followed it.

"I think you're sufficiently buttered."

Ed threw his coat over a dining chair and, without pausing, pulled his shirt off, too. After being in the dark, seeing the curves and planes of his naked body in full light made Roy's brain melt. Ed approached him and slipped his hands inside his open coat. He was still burning hot. Roy spoke softly like there was something he'd disturb, some imbalance he'd strike, if he wasn't careful.

"We're not playing around anymore, are we."

Not a question. Ed leaned up towards him on the balls of his feet, smiling.

"Nope."

Roy kissed him so hard their teeth nearly clicked. Ed’s arms wound around his neck and he let Roy pick him up, a privilege he wasn't expecting. He was surprisingly heavy. He took him to his narrow bed and covered his body with his own, shoving his hips against his in a few unbridled, needy thrusts. Ed laughed. Had he always laughed so much? Roy didn’t remember him being _giggly_ when they knew each other before; it was new, and he liked it. They kicked off their clothes and shivered in the cold of his small, wooden apartment. His linen sheets were rough against Roy’s knees. He pushed Ed to lay back and sat up between his legs. It was different to look at him. When they’d done it earlier, he'd been a pair of broad shoulders and a mess of hair, and now he was _Edward_ and it was so much. He looked at him like he meant it and it left him breathless.

"God, you're beautiful."

Ed laughed again. He spread his arms out on the sheets and Roy drank in every inch of muscle and winter-pale skin.

"Yeah?"

He dipped his head and ran his lips over his obliques, down into the dip of his stomach.

"Quit fishing for compliments, you pest."

Ed moved under his mouth with the raw sexuality and unhurriedness of someone who had no idea that they possessed any sexuality at all. Unbothered, untethered, fluid. It had been insinuated by many of Roy's partners that even at his best, he was too painfully self-aware to be anything close to 'raw.' He bit Ed’s hipbone and he snort-laughed.

“Tickles.”

He slicked up his fingers with a bottle of oil Ed kept behind his nightstand—”I’m not a _nun”_ —and worked him open, and there was a lot less laughing after that. Ed kept pulling him in by his shoulders, tugging his arms, taking his face in his hands to kiss him until his lips were raw. When he pushed inside him, his mouth opened soundlessly against his own, perfectly still.

_“Oh.”_

Roy kissed him. Sex was always fun and usually civil, but so rarely had it consumed him like this. His hands were shaking. It wasn’t frustrated like it was earlier, not an explosion but a _burn_ , all-consuming, razing, the be-all-end-all. He couldn’t remember the last time he had sex with someone he cared about like this, for better or for worse; Ed fit his legs around his waist and it was _him_ , not anyone else. It drove him wild. He pushed his knees up to his chest and hammered into him, flipped him onto his stomach, bit his earlobe, lost in the sweat and ache of it. For all that Ed was cagey in his daily life, he was surprisingly agreeable in bed, pushy but appreciative. He told him what to do and when he obliged, he made all these _sounds._ He wasn’t ashamed of anything and it was glorious, beautiful, rude to his neighbours.

Roy twisted his hair around his fist and tugged his head back, slowing to a torturous grind. He was too close. Ed blindly reached a hand back and closed it around his wrist.

“Trade me.”

He let him go and Ed spun him around, pushed him down into the bed and manhandled his way on top. He shuddered as he sunk down onto him again, his hands curling into fists against Roy’s chest. There was a faint creak to his automail as he moved, like the frame of a settling car. Roy just watched him, hardly there, wondering what mix of luck and cunning and karma could have landed him under a young, beautiful genius who seemed to have nothing in his mind beyond making him come. He didn’t deserve it. Could anyone?

“Slow down,” he breathed, trying to take his hips in his hands. “I can’t—”

“Too bad.” Ed’s mouth fell open as he worked, back arching. Roy yanked on his arm and he was forced to bow over him, swearing and spitting. Roy caught his mouth with his own and Ed slapped his hand down over Roy’s, pinned it to the bed and kept rolling his hips, fast and unrelenting. He gasped against his lips and struck some kind of _angle_ and Roy came suddenly, digging his nails into the back of Ed’s hand, the hot, perfect ache in the pit of him finally letting go. Ed came with only a few more bucks of his hips, which was so wildly flattering. Roy kissed him again, hard, pushing up against the grip on his hands. Ed kept him pinned for a moment, their slow kiss lingering, then flipped off him and thumped down on the bed, their shoulders jammed together. Roy propped himself up. Ed looked wrecked, pink marks all down his throat and shoulders.

"That was alright?" Roy asked.

Ed threw an arm over his eyes. "I forget how to do math."

Roy laughed and buried his face in the crook of his neck, in the salt and skin of him, wet hair against his cheek. Minerals and algae. He hadn’t caught his breath. Again, that flood of endorphins and hormones threatened to drown him, and he fought it off. He felt like an animal, drawn into some primal instinct by the scent of another. He had to be better than that. They didn’t say anything for a long while. He forced himself not to think—not about Ed, the future, not anything. There was just a warm body pressed up against his in a very small bed, and that was enough.

“Do you want water?” Ed croaked.

“Yes, please.”

Ed struggled to his feet. Roy kept staring at the ceiling. The tap ran and it stopped running. Ed didn’t come back. Roy looked over and he was still at the sink, so he hauled himself up off the bed and, with only some hesitation, put his arms around him from behind.

He didn’t pull away. His head fit neatly under his chin; a little too high, not that he’d give him the satisfaction of telling him that.

"This is the most fun I've had in I don't even know when," he said, regretting it as soon as it came out of his mouth. Ed was wary about vulnerability the way most people were wary about explosive devices. It took him a while to answer.

“Good.”

Not particularly warm. He pushed his luck.

"Have you considered the possibility that this isn't just an especially good night?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, maybe it’s not the liquor and hormones. What if it would always be like this?"

The water glass was full. Ed pulled it from under the tap but didn’t turn around.

"That's speculation."

"Maybe." He stooped and hooked his chin over Ed's shoulder. Curled an arm around his waist. "You could test it. It would be the… the scientific thing to do."

Ed snorted. "Casanova."

"I know my audience."

There were pinprick holes in the wall where something had hung once. Thick, cheap paint. They stood there for a long time, Ed tucked naked against his front, his body warm and pliant.

Ed turned around.

“Water,” he said, pushing the glass towards him, and he didn't realize how thirsty he was until he'd drank the whole glass. Ed filled it again and finished it. When he was done, he rubbed an eye and said, “We should probably sleep at some point.”

“That would be nice.”

Ed took his hand and led him to the bed, which was new. He lay down and made room for Roy next to him, and soon as Roy's head hit the pillow he was infinitely more tired than he thought; it bled into his bones, catalyzed by drunkenness. Ed had the duvet laying around their waists and Roy looked down at his body and all its curves and old scars. Without the fire of lust scorching through his veins, it left space for softness and worry. He wondered if Ed felt the same. In the morning, he’d go back to his endless march through the freezing cold and a rifle strapped over his back. It would be months before he was home and even longer before he saw Ed again.

Ed, apropos of nothing, said, “When are you finally going to give it up? Do something productive with your life?”

It took Roy a second to pull back. “Give up what?”

Ed panted like a dog and went 'woof woof' at him. Roy rolled his eyes.

"I'll always be in the military, it's all I know.” He lay his head on his arm next to him. "Not all of us can be lightning in a bottle."

"Oh, whatever."

“Not everyone’s lucky enough to be good at multiple things, boy genius.”

“Whatever, bootlicker.”

There was a pause. Roy thought of the Ed he used to know and the Ed he was trying to know now, and there was a quiet dissonance, something that didn't add up. Everything Ed went through and everything he gave up.

"Well, what are you doing up here?" he asked. Ed craned his neck to look up at him.

"I’m not murdering anyone, if you’re seriously about to see how we stack up.”

"Be nice. I mean up here in the mountains, making a couple calls back home every month, hiding it all... You don’t have to do this. Is this where you thought you'd be after everything?"

Ed shrugged. "I like it here. It's fine for now."

"Maybe. But I don't know how someone with so much love in their life could make themselves so alone." He put a tentative hand on his side. "What chance do us regular people have?"

"I didn't _make myself_ shit, asshole," Ed hissed, turning towards him. "Things just turn out like this, sometimes. What do you care?"

"This may come as a surprise to you, but I care a lot. About you specifically." Roy squeezed him gently. "Before today, I mean, and in a much more... wholesome way. You and your brother."

He could practically hear the discomfort coming off Ed.

“You hid it well.”

“Where was I supposed to start? Was I supposed to drop my life and trek across the world looking for you?”

" _No._ Nevermind, I just—I've got a real profession up here. I have friends. I get out of bed every morning. That's most of everything, isn't it?"

"You're overworked and you have _colleagues_. When was the last time you saw your brother? Or called Winry?"

"Christ, will you leave me alone? We were having a good time, can we go back to that?"

"I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just telling you what I see."

Ed huffed. "And?"

"You've changed the lives of everyone you met. In your wake, there are hundreds of people thinking of you, wondering where you are now. Their little alchemist." He allowed himself a sappy moment and brushed Ed's hair behind his ear. "It seems like such a loss to see you up here alone. You're a national hero. You are deeply, deeply loved."

"Not by anyone who actually knows me."

"Since when have you allowed yourself to be known? How embarrassing."

Ed scowled and closed his hand around Roy's wrist. He brought it to his cheek. "Recently."

"And where was I for this?"

"You tell me."

Roy had built a life around being able to read the room. He chanced it, and went in for a kiss. Ed let him. When he pulled back Ed huffed angrily, like he’d been made fun of.

“Maybe it’s a little quiet around here,” Ed admitted. “Part of me misses the… go go go.”

“And good food? Good films? Some actual excitement?”

Ed jabbed a finger into his chest. “Don’t push it.”

Ed had tucked himself gently against his chest and it was as close as they’d even been, outside of sex, which felt important.

Roy ventured, "Well, you know what I'm going to selfishly suggest.”

"What?"

"Come back to Central. Open another clinic, spread your work there."

"Why is that selfish?" Ed paused. "Don’t tell me you wanna _date_ _me_."

Roy swallowed his pride and the nervous lump in his throat just the same.

"I'd like to give it a shot."

Ed looked at him long and hard and faintly amused, like he'd told an off-colour joke.

"Me."

"You," Roy agreed. After so much practice being intentionally gauzy, he wasn't sure how to come across as genuine. "You're incredible, Edward."

He tried to think of something he could add to clarify, but that was it. He was incredible, extraordinary, completely singular, and Roy wanted to bask in his presence for as long as he was allowed. Maybe it was a relationship that would crash and burn, but he _had_ to know. It would be worth every second regardless, whatever crashed and burned along with it.

He wondered how many times Ed had heard from his partners that he was incredible, being, even more so than Roy, notable. If Roy left the city and wore civvies, he had anonymity. Where could Ed go to escape his limelight, if anywhere? How could anyone else call him incredible without being part of the very small group of people who really knew how incredible he was? Roy guarded him guiltily, like a dragon's hoard. Anyone who knew him on _that day_ did.

“You’re horny and loopy,” Ed said, sitting up a bit. He inexpertly fluffed the pillow behind his head and lay back down. “Talk to me at the end of a very bad workday and tell me you still want to see me.”

“I almost bled out this morning. That’s not a bad enough day?”

Ed didn’t say anything. His point was clear enough: Roy _did_ have something to prove. It wouldn't be easy and he was right to question it. Roy was older, powerful, rich and troubled. Ed was being smart.

Roy kissed his jaw and said, "You don't know me very well yet, but trust me, I'm a catch."

Ed laughed brightly and nudged him away. "You think?"

"I'm an accomplished home cook and I have an unrelenting sex drive."

"You don't say."

"I travel enough that you won't be able to get sick of me. My personal library would keep you occupied for a respectable few weeks before you ate through it all."

Ed made a _hmmm_ noise that sounded wonderfully contemplative.

Roy said, “Consider it. That’s all I ask.”

Ed tucked his head under his chin just a fraction more, and whatever self respect he had went out the window. If it didn't work out, the only person Ed would gloat to about it was him.

“I’ll consider it,” Ed said sleepily, draping an arm over Roy’s side. He smelled dusty and warm, dried pond water and human. “You’re a big _feelings_ guy. You get lots of ideas. Sit on this one for a while.”

That jabbed him in the ribs, but it wasn’t wrong. He fell asleep running his fingers through the short, soft hair at the back of Ed's neck for something to do. Ed’s arm was still over his shoulder, his thigh between his own, and it was warm and easy.

—

He didn’t remember falling asleep but he was woken sharply by the shrillest, most annoying telephone ring he’d ever heard. There was that moment of disorientation, a bed that wasn’t his own and a warm, solid body under his arm. The phone kept ringing.

He groaned, not fully awake, “God, where did you _get_ that thing?”

Ed slurred, “I'm a heavy sleeper,” and leaned over the side of the bed to snatch the phone from the floor. He answered it with: “Tell me someone’s dead or dying.”

They’d left the light on. A blossoming hangover beat a drum behind his eyes and his mouth tasted like sewage. He blinked blearily at Ed’s smooth, toned back and tangle of golden hair and, without thinking, ran a hand down his spine. Real, apparently.

“He’s… what?” Ed said into the phone. "No, I haven't seen him." He twisted slowly to look over his shoulder at Roy. "Nnnno, I'm not on tonight. Ryder should… Right. He hasn't?"

Thoughts were spooling together in Roy’s brain. This was becoming his problem. Ed started to babble.

"No, I—calm down, he's probably—No no no, don't do that—fuck, he's _here_ , alright? He's with me. I'll put him on." Ed rolled over, handed him the phone and mouthed _sorry_.

Roy sighed and put the receiver to his ear. Ed flopped back down and Roy put his chin on his shoulder. "Mustang here."

It was Jaema. _"General? You're not at the clinic! Ryder—"_

"—is just doing his job. While you should be asleep," Roy finished. He knew he wasn't keeping the sated and sleepy tone out of his voice well enough, and neither had Ed. "Do you need me for something, lieutenant?"

_"N-no, I just… You're with the doctor? Ed?"_

"Legally he's not a doctor," he said, and Ed elbowed him. "But yes."

_"Is something wrong?"_

"No, Jaema. I'm catching up with an old friend and I'm steps from the clinic in case my body rejects my alchemically-created guts. At ease."

There was a long pause. What was there to say? Jaema wouldn’t confront him about it and it would be a long time before anyone would.

_“We’re still leaving at…”_

“Quarter to six. I’ll be there.”

_“It’s, ah, half five now, sir.”_

Roy closed his eyes. “See you soon, Jaema.”

_“Thank you, sir.”_

He thunked his head down on Ed’s back and fumbled the phone blindly over the side of the bed. Ed laughed hoarsely.

“You made me lie to that nice little man.”

“I appreciate you trying.”

“Sorry it didn’t work.”

“He won’t say anything.” Roy smushed his face against Ed’s shoulder. “I have to leave soon.”

“I heard.”

"I had a very nice time."

Ed muttered something into his pillow that sounded suspiciously like _me too._

Having feelings for someone was so undignified, Roy decided—the wanton disregard that came with hangovers and bad breath and the sour vulnerability of not caring that someone else saw you like that, your hair sticking up at the back, hickies on your chest. He’d forgotten what it was like.

Ed mumbled, marginally clearer this time, “Ask Hawkeye for my number next time you talk to her, she's got it.”

Roy smiled against his skin. “You want me to call you?”

“Not enough that I’ll get out of bed to write my number down for you, so make of that what you will.”

Roy kissed his shoulder, then leaned over him to kiss the back of his neck, then his cheek. "I'll call you."

Ed buried his face in the sheets. "Don't get killed before you do."

"I won't, but only because you asked so nicely."

By the time he pulled his shirt on, Ed had fallen back asleep. Roy sifted through his piles of books until he found a notebook, tore out a page and wrote on it with a dying pen. He left it on Ed's nightstand and crept out the door, shutting it softly behind him.

_Ready to know you whenever you'll let me._

_xo Roy_

  
  
  


**— _Epilogue: 3 weeks later—_**

Ed wedged the phone between his shoulder and cheek as he threw a piece of bread in the toaster. The cord of the phone trailed across the apartment.

“It sounds like you're doing good.”

 _“Yeah!”_ Al said, reminiscently tinny over the long distance connection. _“Lots going on, but yeah, good. I cannot_ wait _to see you, you have no idea.”_

“Yeah, I’m excited too. We’ll do everything, see everyone. And hang out just us. It’ll be great. I haven’t been back in a while, either.”

Al sighed happily. Ed leaned back on the counter, pleased.

Al said, _“Well, what have you been up to? You haven’t been back to visit at all?”_

“Ah, no. Just really busy. I’ve been meaning to…”

_“I bet. You said Breda was up in the fall, eh? Has anyone else come by?”_

"You remember the colonel? Mustang? Well, General Mustang, now, I guess.”

_“Do I remember him? Please.”_

“Yeah, yeah. He was up the other week, we hung out for a bit."

He could tell by the delighted noise Al made that he was going to ignore any past messiness Ed had with Roy.

_"Oh! That's so great, was he there for—"_

Ed debated being regular and nice about it, but it was so rare these days that he had something to be a brat about and he missed tormenting his brother.

"We slept together," he said cheerily. And then, "Sorry," trying to stifle a laugh.

There was a long, painful pause.

 _"You're messing with me_."

"Nope. Twice."

_"PLEASE don't tell me—"_

"—How insanely good it was? Why would I do that, what would you do with that information? Live with it, forever?"

_"Disgusting. Thanks. You are so stupid."_

"How am I stupid?"

 _“It’s Colonel Mu_ —”

“General.”

 _“What, like you’re proud of that? It’s_ Roy Mustang _, Ed, he’s—_ ”

Ed had been given this speech from Al over a handful of partners who were deemed less than savoury, but he was lying if he said he expected it over Roy. He thought he was a safe bet. Weren’t they friends?

“Aren’t you friends with him?”

_“I mean—”_

“You told me a few months ago how excited you were to read about him in the paper, you _gushed_.”

_“Did anything I say sound like I wanted you to have sex with him? Did I CONVINCE you?”_

“No. _He_ did.”

Another grimace of a silence.

_“Tell me you didn’t actually make him convince you. Is that… a thing?”_

“I didn’t, and yes, probably.” His toast popped and spooked him. He plucked it out and started to butter it. “It’s not a big deal.”

 _"It_ is _a big deal, he’s—him. We’ve known him for a very long time. I’m not getting into this over the phone.”_ Al made a frustrated noise. _“I liked you better when you didn't know what sex was."_

"I liked me better, too."

_"You know most people wouldn't WANT their brother knowing this stuff about them? What happened to being cagey?"_

"Excuse me for sharing my life events with you, my only family!"

_"Share less, please."_

"You’re still coming, though, right?”

_“Obviously, idiot. If we’re meeting in Central, does that mean you’ll see him?”_

“I haven’t thought about it.”

 _“Like hell you haven’t. Are you_ dating _him?”_

“No. He’s only called me once.”

_“So what? If he calls you three times, will you be dating him?”_

“No. I don’t know.”

_“If you’re in Central, he’ll know about it. You’ll have to see him.”_

“We can’t ‘go out’ like regular people, Al. He’s a general, he’d get skinned alive. Amestris isn’t like… a good place to live.”

_"I know, I know. Does that mean you won't see him?"_

Alone in his apartment, Ed allowed himself a small, secret smile, thinking of Roy Mustang and his carefully placed words and his try-hard poker face. His wide chest and his long eyelashes. His stomach flipped.

"I'll consider it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATE: I love the little exchange between Ed and Al at the end so much that I'm working on a second chapter. don't hold your breath but I'm excited.
> 
> Donald’s speech to Roy is a nod to this passage from one of the Hitchhiker’s Guide books that has stuck with me since I was a kid:
> 
>  _She had what it took: great hair, a profound understanding of strategic lip gloss, the intelligence to understand the world and a tiny secret interior deadness which meant she didn't care. Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else in life becomes eerily easy._  
> 
> 
> [I also drew what I saw Ed looking like in this fic.](https://ronibravo.tumblr.com/post/613966853838159872)


	2. Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for waiting and for the kind words about this fic!!

_— **1922, Central —**_

Six months passed and Ed made plans to visit Central. He planned, however tentatively, to turn over the clinic in the north to Georgie and open another in Central, depending on whether he could find space to set up a new clinic in and funding to back it. A surprising number of staff at his existing clinic had friends or family in Central who also worked in the medical field and wanted to work for him if he set something up, which made the question of staffing upsettingly easy. Somewhere, secretly, he’d been hoping for more roadblocks.

The train ride took four days and, for most of it, was blisteringly hot; a harsh winter had barrelled into an excruciating early summer and after so many years up north, Ed didn’t own clothes light enough to deal with it. For four days he sat in his compartment with the window wide open, balmy country air blasting into his face, and he tried and failed to keep his mind off how things would be in Central. First and foremost, the trip was about seeing his brother for the first time in years. Second, it was about looking into moving back to Central. Third—and this piece was infinitesimally small—it was about deciding whether he’d see Roy Mustang again. Roy was an afterthought. He’d see Al, get situated, and then maybe after a few days he’d drop Roy a line and see about meeting up if he was feeling stupid or bored. He couldn’t lie: there was a ‘will we or won’t we’ about the whole thing that made it appallingly exciting.

On the last day of the trip, the passengers deboarded the train to allow for maintenance and he got an hour to freshen up at the station’s traveller lodgings. He pulled his hair back into a high ponytail that kept it off his neck, scraped back to keep it off his sweaty face. Even after a shower, he was intolerably sticky with the heat.

As the train continued its journey, he started to recognize the outer reaches of Central City and got jittery-excited. He regretted telling Al not to meet him at the station and dreaded the long cab ride into the apartment Al had rented in the city. Still, hitting the platform at Central always made him feel like a kid again. It was oppressively hot, the air still and muggy, the sun high overhead. He hauled his trunk behind him out of the way of the passengers pouring off the train and the attendants rushing on, wiped sweat off his forehead and surveyed the platform to situate himself and figure out where to grab a car.

Making its way towards him across the platform through the throng of people and the heat mirage was something broad-shouldered and dark-haired that looked suspiciously like Roy Mustang. He wore an airy white shirt and dark slacks and a jacket tucked under his arm. His windswept hair just starting to silver, his dark eyes, the charming wrinkles at the corners of his smile—Ed squinted angrily at the injustice of it all. What gave him the right? He wasn’t even sweaty, he just glowed.

“Edward! You look strangely unhappy to see me. And here I thought it would be a fun surprise,” Roy said cheerily. He stuck out his hand for Ed to shake and Ed snorted at it, but shook it anyways. No gloves. A strong grip. “Long time no see.”

“Six months,” Ed said. His hand slipped from Roy’s and Roy’s hung forlornly between them for a moment before he put it in his pocket. “I think that’s a pretty good turnaround.”

“Given the distance, yes,” Roy said, still unflappibly happy. “You look absolutely radiant.”

“I’ve been on a train for four days.”

“Yet you look fresh as a daisy.”

“Are you going to be like this the whole time?”

“Not once I get over the unbelievable excitement of seeing you again.”

He was beaming at him like he hung the moon and it was a funny look on him. Ed had always found Roy so serious when he was a kid and learning in adulthood that he was kind of an idiot and a goofball was very charming. Did he always have dimples? 

“Sap.”

He looked the same as he had that winter, maybe a little more tan. Memories of their one strange and wonderful night together came flooding back to Ed all at once, suddenly very real after seeing him again; what had felt like a dream in the months since was suddenly crystal clear and concrete. Roy was interested in him romantically. Roy wanted to have sex with him again, probably, unless a lot had changed. Ed had a series of decisions to make.

Roy stepped closer.

“I’d hug you at the very least, but anyone who’d recognize us would know we don’t have the kind of relationship where we hug.”

“A dead giveaway.”

“Yes.”

Ed was looking at his mouth. He wanted more time to get grounded in Central before being tossed into whatever things were between the two of them and Roy’s sudden presence was like jumper cables to his brain. He was enticing and infuriating like a finger-trap puzzle.

“I have to meet my brother,” he said, like an excuse.

“And I’d never keep you. I thought I’d offer to drive you, if you’d like. Where are you meeting him?”

“Some rental downtown.”

“Excellent. It’s on my way.”

“You don’t even know where it is.”

“Trust me, it’s on my way.”

There was a lull. Roy’s smile dimmed some, replaced by something thoughtful, almost intense. He glanced over Ed’s shoulder, then leaned in so close Ed could smell his aftershave. He spoke near his ear, their cheeks almost brushing like he was telling a secret.

“I want you so bad my teeth hurt.”

Ed _yearned_. Every scrap of cool, calm and collected that he’d hoarded up north like a crow picking through shiny things was suddenly gone.

“I know,” he said lowly. He was proud of himself, leaving Roy to decide whether it was agreement or acknowledgement. “What are you gonna do about it?”

He heard the deep, slow breath Roy took.

“If you think I’m saying this for any particular reason, I’m not,” he said, in a tone that implied that he very much _was_ saying it for a reason, “but I’ll be in the washroom at the north end of the platform in two minutes. So there’s no reason whatsoever for you to… also be there.”

Ed laughed before he could stop himself. “You’re joking.”

“I’ll see you in two minutes if you feel like finding out.”

“You—”

Roy took off down the platform, whistling to himself.

Ed squeezed his eyes shut and counted to ten. Shapes danced across his vision when he opened them. He weighed his morals and his sense of decency against his flagrant disregard for authority, then headed in the direction Roy had gone.

The washroom was, in his defense, clean. Sun streamed through a high window and a creeping vine lined the ceiling. Roy stood washing his hands at a polished little sink and jumped when Ed entered the room. He looked impossibly relieved to see him.

“Thank God, I didn’t think that would work.”

Ed was charging across the room before he could think any more about it; his face hurt from smiling.

“Idiot.”

He grabbed his shirt and kissed him and it made his body _sing_. Roy shoved him into the stall and devoured him, and if there was anything better than getting sucked off in a bathroom stall by a decorated military official, Ed hadn’t experienced it yet. He let his head fall back against the tile and laughed, burying his hands in Roy’s hair. 

_It’s good to be home_ , he thought.

—

Roy insisted on carrying his trunk to his car afterwards, which would have been borderline humiliating if his arms didn’t look so nice when he lifted things. Ed carried his jacket and felt like a caddy.

“New car,” he said idly as he got into said new car. His face was still red and Roy was practically glowing. After Roy swung into the driver’s seat, Ed hissed, “Could you look a little less smug?”

Roy turned his highbeam smile in his direction. “Nope. And yes, new car, thank you for noticing.”

“Surprised you didn’t go with something more ostentatious. It’s downright classy.”

“Me? Perish the thought.”

Ed hid his smile by looking out the window as the vehicle roared to life and they took off down the street.

“How are things?” he asked, trying to be polite. Trying not to think about coming in his mouth.

“Fantastic. There’s a brigadier general trying very hard to get me fired.”

“ _What?”_

“Carlson Metock. He’s a horrible little man who desperately wants to get me involved in a scandal. Last week he sent a prostitute to my apartment.”

“No way.”

“Yes way. I told her very politely that she had the wrong unit and shut the door, and I have no doubt he was waiting down the hall with a camera.”

“Why is he trying to get you fired?”

“I don’t know, he avoids me when I try to confront him. Not that I’ve tried very hard, I find it amusing. I assume he’s a Bradley loyalist who thinks I made the whole thing up, you still find those once in a while. Few and far between, now, but I got a pipe bomb in my mailbox in the year after it happened. That’s stopped, thankfully.”

“Your life is insane.”

“My hope is that you find it exciting.”

Ed realized he was looking at his hands on the steering wheel and looked away.

“I’m here to see Al,” he said, maybe harsher than he needed to be. “I don’t want you, or anyone, to—”

 _Gum up the works_ was the only phrasing that came to mind and it sounded stupid. While he workshopped something else, Roy cut in.

“All jokes aside, I’m genuinely offended that you think you need to tell me that your brother comes first. I may be a nuisance—usually on purpose—but I’m not going to insert myself into your family life.”

Ed winced. “I know.”

“I like you, I’m not an asshole.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

He glanced over. Roy looked serious, his eyes on the road. Ed felt guilty.

“If you…”

Roy interrupted. “Are you looking for clinic space while you’re here?”

“I might.”

“Let me know if you’d like me to line anything up. My aunt’s new suitor works in real estate and he’s been begging to show me his chops, I could get you some showings.”

Ed didn’t want to admit he hadn’t thought about that. It sounded better than his original plan to find a place, which was ‘I’ll ask around.’

“Could do,” he said, noncommittal, as if it weren’t an extremely kind and thoughtful offer. “Left here. The brick building at the end.”

Roy hummed. Ed looked at his hands again as he turned the wheel—long, artful fingers, bluish veins under pale skin. It was hard to not think about them being on him.

“Well, call me if you’d like to take me up on it,” Roy said as they pulled up outside the building. “You’ve got my number.”

It was all so polite; Ed didn’t know whether to be surprised or disappointed. The blowjob in the bathroom hadn’t been polite, so there was that, at least. Roy was an enigma.

“Thanks for the ride.”

“Any time.”

Ed climbed out and pulled his trunk out of the back. The hot, metallic smell of the car and gasoline and Roy in the driver’s seat with his crisp white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, smiling at him—he didn’t know what to call it. He wasn’t great with words outside the scientific lexicon.

“I’ll call you,” he said quickly. Decisive. Roy beamed.

“Can’t wait. Tell your brother I say hi.”

—

When Ed opened the door to the small, third-storey apartment Al rented and saw his smiling face for the first time in two years, he forgot all about Roy for a full forty minutes as they hugged and laughed and unpacked and babbled at each other incessantly. _How have you been how was the train where did you stop when did you leave_ and on and on and on. It wasn’t until Al asked how he’d gotten there from the train station, as they leaned on their little balcony in the hot sun, that Ed remembered Roy.

“Uh, Mustang got me, actually,” he said, not cool at all. Al raised his eyebrows.

“You had him pick you up?”

Ed squinted against the sun, the apartment inside over Al’s shoulder black in his sun-blindness. Al’s hair was cropped short again—last time he saw him, he’d been growing it out—and he was a little wider, his arms freckled and thick, and he wore a big t-shirt tucked into shorts. The picture of an approachable young man on summer vacation.

“He knew when I was coming in but I didn’t know he’d be there. Like I didn’t _ask_ him or anything. He blindsided me.”

He was being weird and he knew it.

Al asked, “Why are you making that face?”

“I’m not making a face, I just look like this.”

“You do not! What’s so funny about meeting him at the station?”

It was always more fun to torture Al in person than over the phone. Ed wasn’t a saint.

“We had sex in the bathroom.”

Al recoiled in horror. “Of the _train station?”_

“I’m not proud of myself.” He couldn’t stop grinning.

“God, you have untold diseases now. You’re disgusting. This is such a bad idea.”

Al spun on his heel and went back inside, the curtains over the doors fluttering in his wake. Ed trailed after him, laughing.

“He’s exciting! I’ve never done exciting!”

“He’s a _threat!”_

“To who, me?”

“To your sanity! Your sense of human decency!”

“Oh, whatever.”

“And to your privacy and maybe your safety, if we’re getting into that now.”

“We’re not.”

Al sat hard on the leftmost bed, sheets bouncing up around him. The apartment was a single room, two beds on the left, a kitchenette on the right, and a bathroom at the far end. An ugly painting of a lake (marsh?) hung over the beds and the whole place smelled musty and old. But the location was good and the price was right, and it had a certain charm.

Al said, “I know you know this, but we live in a pretty awful society. For people who are, uh, different.”

Ed sighed and leaned against the kitchen table tucked against the far wall.

“You can say _gay_ , Al.”

Al was as good about it as anyone had been, when Ed told him, but there were always little things that showed he didn’t fully understand. Ed didn’t blame him and didn’t need him to; Al led with love, which was the important part.

“I just mean it’s not smart to be flippant _,_ Ed! He’s a general! It’ll be so messy if—do you even know how old he is? He’s old enough to—”

“He is _not_ old enough to be my dad and I’d like that stricken from the record.”

“Are you deflecting because you don’t know how old he is?”

“I don’t know because it doesn’t matter! Who cares?”

“That’s—”

“—totally irrelevant, and I know for a _fact_ you don’t care about stuff like that, so you’d better tell me what’s really bothering you because I know it’s not his age.”

“Wh—all that other stuff I just said! That’s what’s bothering me! The risk to your safety, to his life and career and, since he’s the only high-ranking military official I trust, the risk to _all of Amestris_ —are you even listening?”

“I’m listening plenty! You’re being a dick!”

“I’m looking out for you! Someone has to!”

“I didn’t _ask!”_ Ed put his hands against his eyes and hunched over, deflated. “I don’t wanna talk about this. I’m sorry. Have you eaten? Let’s get lunch.”

—

That night back at the apartment, when they were both sun-baked and tired from walking, Ed crept out of the apartment while Al was in the shower and went down the block to call Roy.

_“Roy Mustang.”_

“Hi.”

 _“Oh.”_ He sounded surprised. Ed was mildly flattered that he recognized his voice. _“I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”_

“Don’t rub it in. Al got me excited about opening the clinic and I wanna start looking into it.” It was getting dark and street lights began to flicker on around him. He tugged absently on the payphone cord. “Can you get showings together by Saturday?”

_“Consider it done. I’ll pick you up Saturday morning.”_

Ed smiled against the receiver. “Cool. Thanks.”

Roy laughed softly. 

_“Why you’d thank me for being so self-serving, I’ll never know.”_

—

Ed spent the next three days crawling through the best parts of the city with his brother, his best friend in the world. Central had changed for the better in the post-war period and now had a bevy of delights to offer a tourist and old friend, not a stoic city of white and gray pointing towards a monolithic government building but a colourful, pleasurable city of food and lights that grew more vibrant every year. Without the looming threat of violence and death, culture grew, and Ed enjoyed himself more than he thought possible in such a short amount of time. They ate and walked and talked, and he got his brother wasted more than once, which was one of his favourite things; Al didn’t drink often and got candid and almost bawdy when he’d had a few. They bought stacks of books and read them in lush parks, on the sunny balcony of their apartment, before bed. Ed read a novel for the first time in years for the sheer wanton hell of it—no science, no alchemistry, just a solid story about a man on a quest. He felt like a kid again. And then on Saturday morning, he twisted his freshly washed hair into a braid, slunk out of the apartment where Al slept, and ran into Roy Mustang at the foot of the stairs that led out of the building.

“God, you can be creepy.”

“Riza always told me to take initiative. I’m giving it a shot.” He had paper cups of coffee in his hands, one of which he handed to Ed. He was wearing his civvies, a long navy blue coat in the early morning chill, bluer under the crystal blue sky. “I assume you take it black.”

“Right,” Ed said, both wary and incredibly grateful. “Good guess.”

“You’re not as unknowable as you wish you were. An obsession with ‘toughness’? Desperate to appear wiser than your years? You take it black.”

“And you must take yours with milk and sugar because you’re insanely decadent and don’t give a shit about what anyone thinks.”

“See? You know me, too.”

Roy motioned for him to follow him down the street. Ed sipped his coffee and it burnt his tongue but it was rich and strong. He could smell Roy’s cologne, familiar and new at the same time.

“So, what’s your guy got up first on the docket?” he asked.

“Step-uncle is sitting this one out. He gave me the listings and I’ll be taking you to the showings.”

“Of course you are.”

“There’s not much to being a real estate agent, turns out. He took me through the basic things to look for, and you’re no slouch.”

“This won’t take all day, will it? Al wants to shop for dinner.”

“Not at all. Not many spaces for sale that would be suitable for a clinic, I’m afraid. Something of a zoning issue. I went through the legal mumbo-jumbo last night and I think I’ve got it straight.”

“Hm. Thanks.”

“I think I’m in the wrong career. I’d be a fantastic real estate agent.”

“You’re sure smarmy enough.”

“I think I’d have to get smarmier, actually.”

They got into Roy’s car parked down the block, Roy consulted a map he had spread out in the back seat, and they took off down the lane. It was busy with early morning commuters and they went slow.

“It’s weird being here again,” Ed said, tugging absentmindedly at his short jacket. “It’s so different.”

“I was wondering if you’d say that. Being here all the time, you don’t notice it, but I was thinking the other day about how things have changed since the last time you were here. Feels like a lifetime.”

“I’m seeing fewer armed guards. That’s nice.”

“One of the many benefits of peacetime,” Roy mused. “Well, peacetime enough. There’ll always be border skirmishes.”

“Are they still sending you out to the trenches?”

A flicker of something passed over Roy’s features and was gone before Ed could place it. “Not if I have anything to say about it. Not since I was up north.”

“Oh, you didn’t like getting shot?”

“Very funny. If I hadn’t been near a certain brilliant doctor, I might have died.”

“As if you’d let some knuckle-dragging merc kill you.”

“I didn’t have much say in the matter.”

“You _always_ have say.”

“That’s blatantly untrue,” Roy laughed. “You’ve been good at everything for so long that you forget what it’s like to have fate drag you around by the nose! How far up your ivory tower do you have to be to say _everyone chooses when they die_ , you brat?”

Ed laughed. He forgot that he liked talking to Roy. He was so busy obsessing over the more visceral parts of him that ‘chatting’ hadn’t come into it. He forgot that they were friends, if you squint.

“So where is this place?”

“Right downtown. It used to be a walk-in clinic several years ago and has been sitting empty, apparently.”

“Nice.”

“It’s a couple blocks from HQ. We could get lunch together.”

Ed looked over at him. He was stifling a smile.

“Is its proximity to where you work the main selling point?”

“It’s a big one.”

Ed snorted and shook his head. “You’re…” He didn’t know what he was. They were all over each other at the train station and now they were both pretending they weren’t. There was this tension crackling between them and it was unbearable. “So, what, you’re just my real estate agent now?”

“As opposed to what?”

“You know what.”

Roy hummed. It took him a second. “I don’t know, honestly. I planned to take it easy and see how things go. Kind of… play it as it lays.”

“You sucked my dick within the first five minutes of seeing me. If that’s you taking it easy…”

“That was just a greeting. Like a secret handshake.”

Ed laughed despite himself. “You’re so weird.” Roy was smiling, too. “So we’re playing it by ear?”

“Exactly.”

“You’re not losing your mind over not knowing?”

“Cool as a proverbial cucumber,” Roy said, so easy-breezy about it that Ed almost believed him.

“Look at you, living with uncertainty.”

“Are you proud of me?”

“Yes.”

They had to circle the place twice before they found parking and each time they went by, Ed craned his neck to look.

“It’s the red door?”

“Yes.”

“It looks, uh, shitty.”

Roy clicked his tongue. “You dare insult your real estate agent this way.”

They parked, got out and walked up. It was a narrow building set between a laundromat and a For Lease sign on the next building, with no windows on the front face. Roy knocked on the red door and waited a lifetime for it to open. A man’s gaunt face appeared in the crack. He looked like some species of previously undiscovered bird.

“You’re here to look at the place?”

“Hi,” Roy said pleasantly and stuck out his hand. “Roy Mustang, we spoke on the phone.”

“Did we?”

“Ah, yes. Yesterday. We want to open a clinic…”

“Oh, right, yeah, right, you wanna use it as a doctor place. C’mon in.” The man threw the door open and wandered inside without shaking Roy’s hand. It was dark beyond the threshold and smelled old and musty. Ed glanced sideways at Roy.

“What are you getting me into?”

Roy hesitated. “I’m not positive that this is the man I spoke to on the phone.”

“What?”

“This reeks of Carlson Metock.”

“Who?”

“The man trying to get me fired.”

“Ah.”

“Well,” Roy said, taking a swig of coffee, “you’re not afraid of a fixer-upper, I assume,” and he headed into the space after the bird-like man.

 _“Roy_ ,” Ed hissed, missing the back of his jacket with a desperate snatch. From within the dark he heard him say, _oh, love the wallpaper_.

He crept in after the two of them, leaving the door open behind them for an easy exit. The space was low-ceilinged and dark, lit sporadically by narrow windows up where the ceiling met the wall. The wallpaper in question was both striped and floral, pale blue like a nursery, wet and peeling all over. The bird man stood at the back wall and Roy made a slow lap of the room with his hands in his pockets, inspecting the crown moulding.

Ed cleared his throat. “This isn’t _supposed_ to be a ‘doctor place,’ is it? Like it’s not set up with examination rooms?”

“It can be whatever you’re into, man. Knock down a few walls. Put up a few walls. Whatever.”

Ed found Roy’s gaze across the dark room and mouthed _abort, abort_.

“But,” the bird man went on, “you’re looking for the real special thing about this place, you gotta see this back room here.”

Roy stopped his amiable pacing. “What’s in the room?”

“You just gotta see it to believe it. You know? Makes this place a real steal, you won’t wanna open your… your…”

“Clinic.”

“Yeah, your _clinic_ anywhere else.”

The man stood near a door at the back of the room that was newer and cleaner than anything that surrounded it. A coloured light spread from under the frame. Roy made no move towards it. After a long silence, Ed slurped his coffee loudly.

“Thank you for your time,” he said politely, “but this is not the _doctor place_ for us.”

Back out on the street, hurrying away from the building, Roy laughed.

“Genuinely sorry about that. He must have put in a fake listing, or switched it, or… I don’t know.”

“What do you think was in the room?”

“Opium den? Something else incriminating? Who knows.”

Ed shook his head and laughed. “If this guy wants to get rid of you so badly, why doesn’t he just go the old fashioned route and kill you?”

“I’m a widely-loved public figure! If I died now, it would be with honour. I’d be immortalized. If I die some years from now totally disgraced, however, he wins the long game.”

“Wow.”

“He’s thinking outside the box, I’ll give him that.” Roy raised a hand to his eyes and squinted into the sun. “Lovely day, though.”

Ed hummed and took a sip of coffee. “Mm. So what’s on the docket now, Mr. Real Estate? Got an abandoned barn you wanna show me? A haunted mental hospital?”

“That’s all I had for today, actually. There’s a very nice place in the northern district but it won’t be ready for viewings until after the weekend. And I’m _sure_ about that one.”

“Right.”

“You’ll just have to trust me.” Roy slowed his walk and looked down at Ed. Ed looked back. The sun was behind him and it was hard to see his features, just shapes in the blackness and the wind tousling his hair. “Let me take you to breakfast to make up for almost taking you into an opium den.”

Ed grinned despite himself. “Not gonna say no to that.”

—

Roy picked an upsettingly classy diner, sweet and charming and sun-soaked. It was off the main drag and quiet, nearly empty, and the hostess who greeted them at the door clearly recognized him.

“Can we sit in the back?” Roy asked. The woman laughed.

“You don’t have to ask every time.”

She led them across the tiled floor past tall open windows and trailing plants with heart-shaped leaves. The air smelled of fried meat and bread and honey.

“It’s quiet today,” Roy said, and she laughed again.

“It’s too hot! All these windows don’t help, no one’s coming in.”

She sat them at a little red table in the corner. Ed sat in the booth facing the bank of sunny windows and Roy, after a moment, slid in next to him instead of across from him.

“Better for my back,” Roy said to the hostess. Ed elbowed him, which seemed to go unnoticed to both him and the hostess, who left them with menus and disappeared around the corner. Ed started flipping idly through the menu.

“Same side of the table, Casanova?”

“I like being close to you.”

He said it like it was normal. Ed didn’t know what to do with it, so he ignored it and kept looking at the menu.

“Any recommendations?”

“They make a very good eggs benedict with spinach and that thick Cretan cheese, but anything’s good.”

It was the closest they’d come to being alone since they’d been here, save for the train station bathroom, which Ed wasn’t counting. He felt like there was something he should have wanted to say to make use of the privacy but he didn’t know what. He felt tense, not in a bad way. Roy smelled nice. He liked being close to him.

The server came and took their orders; Ed got what Roy recommended and Roy got some kind of sandwich on multigrain bread. Roy hummed so quietly that Ed wasn’t sure he was doing it at all. It was still so strange to see him again and to be back in Central after what felt like a lifetime away. He was having a quiet Saturday-morning breakfast in the place where all the worst things of his life happened to him, with a man who was there when they happened.

He wasn’t sure what came over him—needing a distraction from the past, wanting to bother Roy for fun, or both. He leaned over, close enough for his lips to brush Roy’s ear.

“Put your jacket over your lap.”

Roy did it with no questions asked, which was a bigger ego boost than he needed. Under the jacket, he slid his hand up his leg and palmed his dick through his slacks. Roy didn’t flinch. His voice was low and even.

“What are you doing?”

Ed looked around. Their section of the restaurant was deserted, sun streaming bright onto the empty tables.

“Would you let me?” he asked quietly. He heard Roy inhale. Wondered if he’d hesitate.

“Yes,” Roy said, right away. His hand tightened around Ed’s leg.

“Right here?”

“Anywhere.”

Ed felt dizzy. He laughed softly, moved his fingers against him and felt him harden.

“Good thing you can be quick.”

Roy exhaled, long and slow. Ed rested his cheek against his shoulder, kept moving his hand. He was hard now, too.

“I’m going to let you lead me off a cliff someday,” Roy said quietly, his voice strained. Ed laughed.

“That sounds like a _you_ problem.”

“Forget breakfast. Let me take you home.”

He turned his head and pressed his mouth to Roy’s shoulder. 

“Not yet,” he said. Roy made a breathy, frustrated noise. “Undo your belt.”

Roy’s hands were moving under his jacket when they heard footsteps clack down the hallway. Ed scooted away, biting back a smile. Roy’s whole face was red.

“Fresh coffee for you gents?” the server asked, brandishing a carafe.

“Please,” Ed said, beaming, pushing his mug towards her. She refilled Roy’s without him saying anything, then left. Roy let go of the breath he’d been holding.

“You’re a menace,” he said tightly. Ed kissed his shoulder again.

“Who’s cool as a cucumber _now_?”

—

Roy drove him home after breakfast, the day getting hot in the afternoon sun.

“Call me mid-week and I’ll have a time for the next showing, the better place,” Roy said. “Its proximity to HQ leaves something to be desired, but it seems nice in all other respects.”

“Oh, boo hoo.”

“Who’ll chauffeur you around if you’re not near my office? Perish the thought.”

Ed laughed. The street whizzed by outside, the tall, narrow buildings re-familiar to him now after his first week.

“Thanks for breakfast, by the way.”

“Thanks for half a handjob, you charmer.”

Roy parked and walked him to the door. He patted all his pockets and realized he didn’t have his keys.

“Ah, shit. Wait ‘til Al comes down, in case he’s not home.”

He rang the buzzer for their apartment and Al picked up right away.

_“Hello?”_

“I forgot my keys again.”

 _“Oh my God. Be right down._ ”

Roy snickered. “You do this often?”

“I _have_ done this. Occasionally. Not often.”

Feet thundered down the stairs and the door almost hit them when it swung open.

“You goof, you—” He looked up at Roy and jumped. “Oh! General Mustang!”

He was much closer to Roy’s height than Ed was, which Ed was annoyed by.

Roy laughed. “Please, it’s ‘Roy.’ We’ve been through hell together, Alphonse, I’m not _general_ anything.”

Al blinked at him. Ed would give anything to know what his brother was thinking, wondering if he, like himself, was shocked at what Roy had become over the years: a warm, living human, with guilt and rage only lapping faintly at his shores and not crashing into his beachfront community.

“Alright, _Roy_ ,” Al said, only half joking, “it’s good to see you. Are you—” He flicked a glance at Ed; Ed conveyed a successful _no no no no no_ with his eyes. “—just leaving?”

“I have an engagement, unfortunately,” Roy said. Ed snorted.

_“An engagement.”_

“Alright, I’m going to go home and listen to records in my underwear, smart guy. Are you happy?”

“Immensely.”

For a second, he thought Roy would kiss him goodbye. He had this look on his face like he was going to. He didn’t know what he’d do if Roy kissed him in front of Al. He’d never kissed Roy in front of anyone and had never kissed anyone in front of Al, and it was something he’d never thought about until he was presented with the reality of it happening. He was surprised to find that it made him nervous.

No one kissed anyone and the moment passed.

“It’s good to see you, Alphonse,” Roy said warmly. “It’s been too long. If your brother lets us, we should all go to dinner. I’d like to hear about Xing.”

Al smiled and nodded hard. “Absolutely. For sure.”

Ed looked between the two of them and their strange tension, clearly pleased to see each other after such a long time but also simultaneously grimacing. Finally, Al laughed.

“Sorry. It’s just… funny,” he said, halting, trying to stifle another laugh. Roy just smiled and shook his head.

“I thought you’d say that.”

“It’s _different_.”

“It’s allowed to be funny. I just hope you’re adjusting.”

“I’d adjust a lot better if Brother could stop talking about you.”

Ed croaked, _“Al.”_

Roy was instantly, as if someone had flipped a switch, smug. “Fascinating. That’s something you’ll have to take up with him, I’m afraid.”

Ed started pulling on his jacket. “You’re done here. Go home.” Roy dug his feet in.

“We should go for dinner just us, Alphonse, I’d love to discuss what your brother has to say about me.”

Ed kept shoving, backing up into the doorway with Al. “I’ll call you.”

“He’s the greatest mind of his generation, I’m sure he—”

“Out!”

Roy mimed _call me_ at Al with his thumb and pinkie as Ed slammed the door in his face. As soon as it was shut, Al doubled over laughing and didn’t come up for air for some time.

“Knock it off,” Ed said, shifting his weight around uncomfortably. “You’re so embarrassing.”

“He’s funny!” Al said, beaming. “You didn’t tell me he was funny!”

Ed climbed the stairs, Al trailing behind.

“I didn’t notice.”

“Oh, come on!”

He wandered into the room, toed off his shoes and tried to busy himself by putting away dishes. “I’m not putting my dick in his jokes.”

Behind him, Al made a _yech_ noise. “Oh my God, Ed! Will you lay off for one second? What’s the matter with you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You—I don’t know! You seemed like you liked _talking_ to him, at least. Why do you keep shoehorning all this sex stuff into it?”

“I’m not trying to.”

“You mention it constantly! You’re not _friends_ with him, too?”

“You can’t tell me you don’t think he’s handsome.”

“Of course I do, he looks like one of those buff-guy marble statues with a nicer face and a more complex ethnic background.”

“There you go.”

“But that’s not the point! You’ve known him your whole life, and it’s nothing now? Who cares what he looks like? This is what I’m talking about.”

“Why is it okay to be someone’s friend, but not sleep with them? Do _you_ not like him?”

“Of course I do!”

“But you don’t want him sleeping with your brother.”

“I don’t want _most_ people sleeping with my brother! That shouldn’t come as a surprise to you!”

Ed groaned and put his hands over his eyes. “I am so, so tired of talking about this.”

Without looking, he swore he could _hear_ Al throw his arms in the air.

“But you keep bringing it up! You let him come over and you talk about him when he’s not here, and I just— I wish you’d talk to me. For real.” He sat hard on the end of his bed. “Far be it from me to tell you you can’t do something, especially date someone, I just… If you don’t even like him, it sounds like you’re just doing it for fun. Or because you think it’s funny. Which, on top of all the reasons not to, makes it a really bad idea. In my books, anyways. It would be different if you were… I don’t know. If you actually _liked_ him, I wouldn’t be saying any of this. I just don’t wanna see you get hurt. Or, uh, hurt anyone.”

 _Tell him_ , Ed thought, his gut twisting. _Tell him about how it makes you feel when you catch him looking at you out of the corner of your eye. About falling asleep with him tucked against your chest last winter and the delicious and horrifying sinking feeling you get when you think about whether there’s actually something THERE with him and his delightful fucking jokes._

Instead, he said, “Yeah, well,” and didn’t look at him.

—

The next showing was in the late afternoon on Wednesday, further out of the city centre in a suburban area where the streets were wide and lined with trees.

“Isn’t this quaint,” Ed said, slamming the car door behind him. “Where was this when I was here before?”

“It was a light industrial area, I think,” Roy said, coming around to the sidewalk. “Nice, isn’t it? I have colleagues who live out here. Great place for young families.”

“Not too far to drive from anywhere.”

“Great place for a clinic,” Roy teased, nudging him as they started down the street. There was something familiar and sweet in the action that made Ed’s throat catch, but he didn’t say anything. “I’ll give you a discount on my finder’s fee since we’re such good friends.”

“Is that what we are?”

“Good friends and then some.”

The clinic was unassuming from the street, a flat front and a window and a wooden bench outside. The window was boarded up; the place wasn’t in use. Ed knocked on the door and shoved his hands in his pockets, waiting in a strangely tense silence. The man who answered was young and bright-faced, half a head taller than Roy with slicked-back black hair. His smile somehow conveyed a gentle, wordless understanding.

“Hello! You’re here to see the clinic?”

He addressed Roy and Ed decided to be benevolent by not faulting him for it.

“Yes, hi, Roy.” Roy shook his hand and gestured at Ed. “This is Edward. He’s the buyer, I’m just tagging along.”

Ed watched the man make the face that people made when they thought they recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t place where. He’d gotten it a handful of times every day since returning to Central and _not_ getting it was the only thing he missed about the north.

“I’m Thomas. Nice to meet you.” He shook his hand, too, still smiling. “Not to show my hand here, but I’m glad to have the interest. Not too many folks looking to open a clinic these days. Or, ever.”

“Fair enough,” Ed said. “Why’re you looking to sell?”

“C’mon in. Mind the mess, we’re finishing up some renovations.” Thomas opened the door and gestured for them to enter. “My father and I run a family practice together and we’ve just outgrown the space. There’s a need for GPs out east and we’re opening a bigger community clinic with a couple other doctors.”

“That’s great,” Ed said, genuine but distracted, looking around. Buckets of paint and rollers and a shop vac lay scattered around the room. The lobby area was wide and open, a small nurse’s station to the left and a reception window in the centre, standard and also perfect. A set of swinging doors led into the rest of the clinic. “Can I…?”

“Yes! Look around, you’ve got full reign.”

“Sweet.” Ed banged through the doors and hummed appreciatively. “They’ve got a nice heft to them, I like that. Oh _man_ , it’s huge back here!”

“Twenty-four rooms,” Thomas agreed. “I think plenty sizable for this neighbourhood. What kind of clinic will you be opening? A walk-in, family medicine…”

“Kind of everything,” Ed said, popping his head into each exam room that lined the hall. “We specialize in a new kind of medical alchemy, I ran a clinic up north near Esfakot, if you know it. I’m looking to do the same here.”

“A… _new_ kind of medical alchemy?”

“I realize that sounds sketchy but trust me, I got all the regular permits.”

Thomas laughed. “I’m sure you do. That sounds very exciting.”

Roy said, “I got shot in the gut and was up walking again that afternoon. Zero pain, no complications. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. The man’s a genius.”

Ed stuck his head out of an exam room. The look Roy was giving him was entirely too affectionate. “It’s just _science_ , grow up.”

Both the other men laughed. Thomas said, “My father always says that. He’ll have patients saying medicine is a miracle, thanking him, and he’ll say things like, ‘What are you thanking me for? I didn’t invent penicillin.’“

“He sounds very down-to-earth.”

Thomas looked down. Ed stopped bopping in and out of rooms to listen, curious.

“He’s a good man. Troubled, but… he was a military doctor. We run a clinic together now, but there was a time where he wasn’t working, out of some sense of… I don’t know. Guilt. It was hard on our family.”

Roy nodded solemnly. “It can be tough to come out of, afterwards. Civilian life doesn’t always follow as neatly as we want.”

“Were you in the military, Roy?”

“Still am.”

Thomas made a quiet noise of acknowledgement that sounded almost like a condolence. “My father retired some time ago. For years after, he only worked on cadavers. He said he wasn’t worthy to treat the living. I don’t know what he…” He stopped and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m—”

“You’re not... Dr. Knox’s son?” Roy said suddenly. 

Thomas froze in front of them, then slowly turned around. Ed saw the resemblance instantly, the same shape of the jaw and the long nose. He didn’t realize Knox was old enough to have a son in his thirties.

“You know my father?”

“We were in Ishval together,” Roy said, and the two of them shared a frown that Ed imagined came up a lot when you talked about Ishval. “And after, he did some very important work that saved a couple friends of mine. During… everything.”

There were a couple different things that people called the events that led up to the end of King Bradley’s reign, but none stuck. People used get-around-it words and hand motions and made unpleasant faces to convey what they meant.

“That’s incredible,” Thomas said, obviously moved. “He—he never referred to any of his old friends by name, but I’m sure you’re one of them.”

“ _That smarmy bastard_ , maybe,” Roy supplied helpfully.

“That sounds familiar.” Thomas laughed, clearly embarrassed. “Come on, let me show you the offices and workstations in the back.”

The offices and workstations in the back were, of course, perfect. Everything was perfect. Ed’s realization that he could actually move back to Central and keep doing what he was doing swelled in him like the crest of a tidal wave and broke against his consciousness: _you could come home_.

“That’s about it,” Thomas said as they stood outside the back entrance after a full loop of the facility. “Since we’re all friends here, I’ll be honest—no one else has put an offer in on the place, so if you want to talk, it’s yours.”

“I want to talk,” Ed said earnestly, shaking Thomas’s hand when he offered it. “It’s great. Really perfect.”

“Glad to hear it! The place means a lot to dad and I, it would be nice to sell it to an old friend of sorts.” He took a business card out of the file folder he’d been carrying and handed it to Ed. “Sleep on it and give me a call when you’re ready, I’m sure you’ve got other places to look at.”

“Absolutely. Sounds great, thanks.”

They exchanged pleasantries and well-wishes for Knox Sr. for a few more moments before Thomas went back inside and Roy and Ed were left alone in the lane behind the building.

Roy grinned at him. “Well?”

“It’s perfect. It’s _perfect_.”

“Not too shabby for a first-time real estate agent.”

“It’s perfect!” Ed said again, laughing. “God, _thank you_ , you’re—”

He took Roy’s face in his hands and kissed him.

Roy made a surprised noise in the back of his throat, his hands coming up to his arms. He smelled like sweat and heat and sun and for a few long seconds, everything was perfect and easy. Ed was fifteen in his everlasting red duster, running on fumes and self-importance; he was nineteen in a long white parka, quiet and cold and untethered; he was twenty-two and wearing practical walking shoes on a hot summer day, closer to something that felt like home than he’d been in years and years and years.

They broke apart, still clinging to each other. Ed sucked in a panicked breath. Roy’s face was hot under his palms and he was looking at his mouth, so close he could taste him.

“Is this—”

“ _Yes.”_

Roy fisted his hands in the front of his shirt and ran him back against the wall of the alley, a drain pipe offering some minor protection from the view of the street, and kissed him so hard their teeth hit. Ed swore his feet weren’t even touching the ground and he just clawed at whatever part of him he could get his hands on, shoving at each other, lost in it.

He choked in a breath. “Do you live near here?”

“I’d better.” Roy kept alternately keeping him away and pulling him in, kissing him hard and then trying to pull back. “Okay, okay, we’ll just—the car—over—here—”

“Mm.”

Ed fisted a hand in his shirt and tugged until he kissed him again. He had his face in his hands, one moment clutching him closer, the next keeping him at bay.

“Just—one second—”

“Mmhm.”

“ _God_ —”

“In a sec.”

Another long, torrid kiss; each one was harder to end than the last and it felt like drowning, sucking in last gasps of air before being dragged under.

“Okay okay _car,_ now,” Roy said, holding him back. He gave a furtive look around, then took off towards the street holding Ed’s wrist. In the car, he sat close enough on the bench seat for Roy to keep a hand on his leg as he drove and it was all he could do to keep from pushing it between his legs.

“You’re speeding,” he said, trying not to smile.

“I am,” Roy agreed, squeezing his leg. “This is torture.”

“You’ll fuck in a train station bathroom, but you’re too good to do it in an alley?”

“They’re inherently different. And we didn’t _fuck_ in the bathroom.”

“Only because you’re a coward.”

He felt like a crazy person. He wanted Roy’s mouth on him and every second it wasn’t felt like cruel and unusual punishment. He didn’t know where Roy lived and couldn’t gauge the length of the trip. It was killing him, it already felt like hours.

“Have you been with anyone since?” he asked, not because it meant much to him, but he was curious. He had very little understanding of what Roy was like when he wasn’t around. 

Roy huffed. “No. But don’t flatter yourself, I’ve been busy.”

Ed laughed. Roy squeezed his leg again. He’d been in Central over a week at this point and he couldn’t remember why he’d been waiting.

Roy lived in an apartment building with a green awning, a uniformed doorman and marble floors in the lobby that clicked under Ed’s uneven footfalls. He thought they’d get a second alone on the way up to his apartment, but as the gilded gate of the elevator pulled back it revealed a kindly old operator standing there.

“General Mustang! Nice to see you again, sir.” The old man blinked up at Roy, hardly chest-high on him. His bleary eyes swiveled to Ed as they both stepped in. “And a friend!”

“Hi,” Ed said, awkwardly shuffling into the corner.

“Hi, John,” Roy said warmly. “How’s Elma?”

“Surgery went fine! Thank you, thank you.” The old man slowly pulled back the giant lever at his side until the elevator started moving. He seemed to know the floor without Roy asking. His gaze fell back on Ed. “I feel like I know you from somewhere.”

Ed realized he was wearing a red shirt. Rookie move. The more red he wore, the more people remembered. “Not sure.”

The old man snapped his fingers. “Don’t tell me—you’re that magic boy what saved the country a few years back! How long ago was that now, ten years? Nearly ten?”

Roy choked on a laugh that the old man didn’t seem to notice, or else it didn’t bother him. Ed was mortified.

“About that, sir.”

“Isn’t that something! A real hero, in my little lift. My daughter was there, you know, in the city when it happened. I was out visiting my aunt down south and missed the whole thing.”

Ed didn’t appreciate the flippancy but wasn’t about to ream a sweet old man. “It’s better that you were gone.”

“Oh, maybe, maybe. You could be right.” The elevator started to slow as they approached Roy’s floor. The old man peered up at him again. “They made you look taller in all those photographs, imagine that. If only I had that magic in my wedding photos!”

Roy made a noise that couldn’t be put into words. Ed closed his eyes and tried to school his face into something serene.

“Have a good one, John,” he heard Roy say as the doors parted. The hallway was carpeted, silent. As soon as the elevator doors shut behind them, Roy barked out a laugh. “He’s a nice man.”

Ed scrubbed his hands over his face. “Christ. Talk about a mood killer.”

“Believe it or not, I already knew you were short when we were making out. This isn’t news.” His keys jingled. “I don’t know what it says about me that my mood is undamaged.”

“Psychopath.”

Roy’s apartment was down at the end. Ed stood behind him as he unlocked the door, watching his shoulders shift as he moved. His heart was beating too hard. He’d never imagined what Roy’s apartment would look like, he hardly considered that he existed at all when he wasn’t looking at him. And now he had an elevator operator whose wife’s name he knew.

Roy led him inside. “Make yourself at home, or whatever it is people say. Spend some time getting your _mood_ back.”

The narrow hallway led the length of the apartment, the walls paneled with walnut at the bottom and painted warm gray at the top. Sun streamed in the open doorways and a bright painting hung in a massive frame down the hall.

“Wow,” Ed said, like an idiot. Roy toed off his shoes and hung his jacket on a rack by the door, then walked ahead.

“What makes you horny? Books? The library’s at the end of the hall.”

“Right,” Ed said, too distracted to engage, and followed him. The first room he stuck his head into was an immaculate sitting room, two lush love seats, a coffee table, bookshelves, a plant trailing from somewhere. The window showed the brick facade of the building next to this one. He kept walking. “Nice place. Is it new?”

“Thank you! No, I’ve been here about five years, which seems worthless when I’m always working.”

The hallway opened into a blue kitchen with copper pots hanging over a stove, white cupboards with latticed glass fronts showing heavy, sensible dishes stacked inside and a big wooden table under a window that looked onto the street. Roy leaned on the counter and smiled at him. Ed hovered in the doorway feeling like an idiot. He could imagine Roy wearing an apron in this kitchen, rolling up his shirt sleeves and pouring chilled wine to guests carousing around the table. It made his heart do a jump-twist-thud that he didn’t know how to classify. He wandered up to Roy, still looking around.

“If you’re trying to make me embarrassed of my little cabin-apartment, I’m not. I liked it there.”

“I liked it there, too.” Roy stepped in close enough to reach out for his arms and give him an amiable squeeze. He laughed. “It’s strange to have you here.”

“It’s strange to be here. _You_ live here.”

“I do,” Roy agreed. “Not too strange?”

Ed was looking at his mouth. They were so close. He let his hands wander up his sides.

“Nope.”

Roy laughed again. He had a nice laugh. He knew he was making fun of him but for some reason, he didn’t care; when it was him, he didn’t mind much.

“How’s that mood coming?” Roy teased.

“Getting there,” Ed said, in fact far past ‘getting there.’ He could hardly think.

“If you like the kitchen, wait until you see the bedroom.”

Ed raised up on the balls of his feet and kissed him, clumsy and urgent. Roy’s arms came around him so easily like they’d kissed a thousand times exactly there, in his kitchen in the late afternoon. Roy grabbed the back of his neck hard and the dumb, possessive passion of it drove him _wild_. He started to tug him out of the kitchen before remembering he didn’t know where his bedroom was, and then Roy led him. Eventually there was a butter-soft comforter under his back, the room cool, dark, smelling overwhelmingly of Roy. Roy settled over top of him and ground a thigh between his legs, grabbed his face and kissed him until neither of them could breathe. 

“I lied,” he breathed, “I’m not cool as a cucumber, I want you so bad it makes me _sick—_ ”

Ed laughed and it came out high and bubbly and he forgot to be embarrassed. “I know.”

They kissed as they tore off their clothes, kept kissing as Roy slicked up his fingers and worked him open and he clung to him like he’d die if he let go, swallowing half-words and cries. Roy sat up and Ed sunk down onto him, his hair falling in a curtain around them, his back bowed, shuddering. He held his face in his hands and kissed him, kissed him, his nails dragging down his back so hard it stung, his mouth ferocious against his.

“Tell me what you want,” Roy panted, buried inside him, lips against his cheek, “Anything, _anything_ —”

Ed said, “This,” and Roy dissolved under him. He hoisted him up by his automail leg—casual lovers were almost exclusively too shy to touch it at all—and flipped him onto his back, still twisted around each other, unwilling to give up an ounce of crushing intimacy. Roy fisted a hand in his hair and hammered into him, breath rushing, everything aching and hot and closer, infinite, all of it too much. Roy was taller than him and so their faces didn’t line up properly, they never did, and he sobbed into the crook of Roy’s neck, dug his fingers into his back and came. Roy made this _sound_ and kissed him, bit his lip, and kept moving against him until he was there, too.

Roy slumped against him, face buried in his shoulder and breathing hard. Ed let his arms fall around his neck and his whole body buzzed and pulsed and slowly started to calm. They were a mess of sweat and Ed’s tangled hair and they lay like that for some time, catching their breath, basking.

Eventually, Roy peeled himself off. His face was red and blotchy and Ed watched him roll off the bed and disappear into the ensuite bathroom to get him a damp washcloth; seeing him slump around his apartment naked was deliciously undignified. He looked around his bedroom for the first time. It was very nice and perfectly normal: one window with the curtains drawn, a chaise at the foot of the bed, a chair draped in clothes near the closet, a glass lamp. He peered over the edge of the bed and sure enough, there was a pair of slippers. 

“You’re very normal,” Ed said, still loopy, lying on his back the wrong way across the bed. Roy returned and dropped a warm washcloth on his stomach, then flopped down next to him. 

“What?”

“Your bedroom,” he said, cleaning up. “It’s just regular.”

“Well, what kind of _pizzazz_ did you expect? A sex dungeon? An underprivileged Cretan houseboy?”

“No. You just always surprise me.”

Roy’s hand drifted down his arm. He rolled onto his side and Roy curled an arm around him, pulling him closer. He felt cracked-open and raw, vulnerable in a way that took a lot of grappling with, but not unhappy. Just a lot.

“That was…”

“Very,” Roy agreed. He was looking at him like… Ed didn’t have a word for it. His whole body was sore in a way he really liked and Roy’s arm around him felt like it was supposed to be there. He liked having his face so close to his, able to map out the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and his immaculate eyebrows and wide nose. The endless black of his eyes. His hair, sticking up stupidly at the front.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Ed said quietly. Roy stifled a smile, clearly very, very pleased to hear it.

“The feeling’s mutual. As you know.”

It didn’t feel impulsive anymore. It was something they’d both spent months turning over in their minds.

“I don’t know why I made you wait,” Ed admitted. Roy shrugged a shoulder.

“You’re here for your family. You’re testing the waters. I respect that.”

“You’re just… such a good real estate agent, I didn’t want to jeopardize that.”

“I’ll still be a good, ah, real estate agent. Regardless of what happens here.”

Ed’s throat got tight for some reason. Unbridled post-sex hormones. “Thank you.”

Roy kissed him, soft. Without the tension of earlier it was slow and relaxed and easy and went on longer than Ed realized; Roy pulled a sheet over them and they laid like that for some time, trading kisses, half asleep.

“What are your plans for tonight?” Roy asked softly, rubbing his knuckles against Ed’s cheek. “I can make you dinner if you’re free. I’ll brine a chicken.”

Ed nipped at him. He rolled onto his back and flicked his hair out of the way, and Roy propped up on an elbow to look down at him.

“Make me a drink first,” Ed said, “dinner can wait.”

—

Ed used the phone in Roy’s study to call Al, mad at himself for being impressed that Roy had a phone.

“I’m staying at Roy’s tonight if that’s cool,” he said, watching the door as if Roy would sneak up on him. Al laughed.

_“Ah, you’ve progressed to a first name basis. Is that good?”_

“Yes, you brat. Whatever. He just doesn’t live near us and it’s easier to stay.”

_“Pure convenience, I’m sure. Did you like the place today?”_

“It’s perfect! You’ll love it. And you won’t believe who owns it, you’re gonna lose your mind.”

_“Who?!”_

“I’ll tell you later. But Roy already has another one planned in a few days, and it can’t hurt to have a look, too. Round things out. So I’ll be gone again on Wednesday.”

_“When did you get so practical?”_

“I’m practical as shit.” He glanced at the door again. “You’re not mad?”

_“That you’re staying out tonight? Why would I be mad?”_

“I dunno, I’m here to see _you_. I should be spending time with you.”

_“If anything you spend too MUCH time with me. Gracia invited us for dinner again tonight, I won’t be sitting around alone.”_

“Oh, shit, should I come? I can—”

 _“We were just there the other day! It’s fine! It’s not a thing.”_ There was a crackling pause. _“In case it comes up, and maybe this is a stupid question, but—are you telling people?”_

“About…”

_“Yeah.”_

It hadn’t come up yet; he’d only seen Roy around Roy, and briefly Al, who already knew. But Havoc called him the day before and wanted to get everyone together for drinks the following week, and it _would_ come up. They hadn’t talked about it, and given everything, Ed didn’t think they had to.

“We’re not,” he said. “Please. I mean, you can tell her we’re hanging out or whatever, but don’t make it sound—”

 _“I get it. Trust me, no one’s mind would go there without being told_. _”_

“Thanks.”

_“Any time. Have fun with your ‘hangout,’ you demon.”_

—

They migrated from the bedroom to the kitchen, and then to the library on Ed’s request after Roy made him a greenish cocktail that tasted like heaven. He put a chicken in the oven an hour ago and the whole apartment smelled like garlic and butter. 

“I can’t believe you own a robe,” Ed said, not for the first time. Roy gave a flourish of the cotton robe in question as he entered the room.

“I’m a hedonist.”

“You’re a workaholic.”

“Right, and when I’m not, I deserve to be a hedonist.” He sat on the loveseat next to Ed, who was poring over the bookshelves with his eyes and half ignoring him. “I have a guest robe, if you’d like.”

“I’m plenty comfortable without your _used robe_ , thanks.”

“I guess we’ll have to get you your own.”

Ed looked at him sharply. “Don’t get me a robe.”

“Too late. I’m already picking out the colour.”

Ed chuckled. He stood and moved over to the shelves that lined the walls of the small room, his head cocked to read each title. 

“ _Marine Craft of the Amestrian Navy, 1712–1780_ ,” he read aloud. “Do we have a navy? We’re landlocked.”

“We had patrols in the canals for a while. Fascinating stuff.”

“You’re so lame.”

“I also have some sordid romance novels in there if you dig.”

“ _Pathophysiology of Blood Disorders_ … _The Complete Guide to Xingian Show Dogs, 4th Edition… Analyzing the Alchemical Mind…_ ”

“Yes?”

“You’re a piece of work,” Ed said happily. “I thought you’d just read like… well, _Marine Craft of the Amestrian Navy_.”

“And I told you, I’m multifaceted. I don’t know why you insist on thinking of me as some stuffy old man when you also insist on sleeping with me.”

Ed turned around, slurping his drink, and Roy was looking at him. More specifically, he was looking at the valley of muscle between his shoulder blades. Ed let him.

“How old are you, exactly?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Al asked me the other day and I didn’t know.”

Roy shrugged. “I’ll be thirty-eight this fall.” Ed squinted at him. Roy added, “Fifteen years. If you’re wondering. Assuming you were born in ‘99, which I believe you were.”

“Is fifteen years bad?”

“Depends on who you ask. Do _you_ think it’s bad?”

Ed did some quick soul-searching, nothing new. He landed on the same answer he’d always landed on.

“It’s unpleasant,” he said simply, turning back to the books. Roy raised his eyebrows.

“Is that what you’d call it?”

“Yes. You’re not my boss anymore, but you _were_ , so there’s that. And fifteen is a lot of years to be older than someone.”

“Not a _lot_ a lot.”

“It’s kind of a lot-a-lot, actually. So there are those two things, which make it…” He searched for another word. “Questionable. But not gross or illegal.”

“I’ve never heard the prospect of sex with me be called ‘not gross or illegal,’ as a positive thing.”

Ed turned around. The drink was going to his head. It was too good, he was drinking it too fast. “Have you heard it at all?”

“I’ve heard lots of things.”

“No doubt.”

Roy held out an arm. “Come sit, your literary scrutiny is giving me hives.”

Ed laughed, and went anyways. Roy kissed him as he settled down next to him, taking his drink and putting it on the side table. He smelled like sex, and faintly like parsley from the kitchen.

“I love having you here,” he said, his arm falling easily around Ed. “You notice every little thing about everything. You make me feel more like _me._ ”

Ed didn’t know what to say, embarrassed. After a moment, he reached up and brushed Roy’s hair back.

“Speaking of which, did I mention you’ve got more grays than I thought you would?”

“Several times, thank you very much.”

“Why’re you going gray if you’re not even forty? I feel like that’s young.”

“Genetics, I assume. Stress. Who knows, but it balances out my baby-face, I think. Lends some credibility.”

“You’re _that_ stressed?”

“Not lately, no. But it’s the military, you remember. They’re not small decisions.”

There was a pause. Roy lifted his drink and ice clinked in his glass. Ed hesitated around a question he’d been meaning to ask him since he was fifteen.

“Are you ever worried they’ll make you… do something again?”

He wouldn’t give words to what _do something_ had been for Roy in the past. Already Roy’s face had become lined and harsh at his question and Ed saw the man he remembered from his youth, whom he wasn’t exactly eager to visit.

“I’m not worried about that,” Roy said finally, not sounding even a little bit unsure. Easy breezy.

“Because we’re not at war?”

“Because I wouldn’t do it.” He still wore that lined, stressed face. “Anything like that happens again, and I say no. No matter the consequences, I say no.”

“But what if—”

He put two fingers to his head like a gun and pulled the trigger with his thumb. Made a faint _boof_ sound with his mouth.

“I should have the first time, too,” he said, “but I was young. I don’t know. I still believed.”

Ed hardly knew what to say. A dozen conflicting feelings battled for dominance and he just sat with it for a while.

“If you don’t believe in it now, why are you still doing it?” he asked, only a little afraid of the answer. Roy passed him his drink and he took it with numb hands. “The military. Any of it. You could… I don’t know. Do something else.”

He half-remembered his offhand comments last winter about Roy ‘getting a new job’ and felt belatedly guilty. Roy had a way of making people forget who he was, what he’d done and the weight he carried around every day; his smiles, his jokes, his cotton robe. The misdirection was probably intentionally and painstakingly cultivated. When Ed remembered, it felt like staring over the edge of a cliff he suddenly found sloping away under his feet, skittering into a black gorge below that echoed with words like _war criminal_ and _genocide_.

Roy said, “I hope you don’t think I’ve grown compliant.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever been compliant,” Ed said meekly. “You’re not even, like, _agreeable_ most of the time.”

Roy smiled down at his hands and, seeing it, Ed found it a little easier to breathe.

“I don’t do something else because I have _more_ than blind belief now,” Roy said. “I have… a strategy. Blueprints. A plan, and power. I’ll make things better through action and decisions and an agenda. Hope and belief aren’t strategies, not good ones. I can do better now.”

Ed just stared at him. Again, he’d forgotten. Roy was just _Roy_ and to think that he was also this important figure, someone powerful, was constantly lost on him. He was wearing a _robe._

“Wow.”

Roy scoffed and looked away. “Sorry. I’m being dramatic.”

“No, I just—I forget. Sometimes. Who you are.” Ed put his hand on his leg, feeling too dramatic himself. “You’re a really, really good man. I don’t know if you hear that enough.”

He sucked his teeth. “ _Good_ is subjective.”

“Did you ever—”

“Please,” he said softly, his voice breaking, “let’s talk about something else. So much good came from what we did. You—your continued existence, who you’ve become—are one of those things. I don’t need to think about the rest of it.”

He dipped his head and kissed him, long and slow and deep, until Ed was dizzy and lost in it. 

—

Over the next week, Ed and Al saw old friends; they spent a night at Gracia’s, took Elicia to a playground and the zoo, and stayed for two more dinners and a lunch. They saw Roy’s old team, now scattered in different parts of the organization but still friends. They went to a pub with Breda, Havoc and Feury, and after an hour Roy showed up. Ed was on high alert, but they quickly and obviously settled into keeping it a quiet secret. They pretended they hadn’t seen each other since Ed got back, which was fun and made Roy’s eyes glint impishly in a way Ed loved. If it ended up being anything, there would be time to share.

—

“This one’s really out there.”

“I thought you’d appreciate the variety.”

Another gloriously sunny afternoon spent in Roy’s car. Ed leaned out the window and the wind whipped through his hair. They’d been driving for a half an hour and had just cleared the city, the tall, crowded buildings giving way to clusters of homes and sprawling acreages.

“I don’t know how practical it is,” Ed said, pulling himself back inside. Roy’s hand settled almost automatically on his leg. “I really liked Knox’s place. I don’t think this can top it.”

“Probably not, but it was already set up. It could be fun if nothing else.”

“Fair ‘nuff.” Ed was happy to go. He was in an exceedingly good mood; Roy had made him breakfast. “Wait, shouldn’t you be at work? What day is it?”

“I took the day off!” Roy said, triumphant. “You’re a good influence on me. I’m shirking responsibility wherever possible.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No, but one day off won’t kill anyone.” Roy squeezed his leg. “And you’re still a good influence.”

Ed hummed. The sky was perfectly blue and Roy was wearing these dark little sunglasses while Ed squinted against the light. He’d forgotten what summer was like; up north, it was just a gray, muggy couple of months that broke up the rain and snow, and here, summer rolled over the low hills and baked the stone streets and it was big and hot and visceral. It was quiet outside the city, too, only a lone red car puttering off in the distance behind them and otherwise, nothing. Just low buildings with wooden gates out front, rows of tomatoes, a burnt-out truck on the property.

“This one up ahead,” Roy said, gesturing at a cluster of outbuildings off the main road. As they approached, Ed spotted a wooden hanging sign by the driveway with a big red cross on it, indicating a clinic.

“Oh, too cute,” he said as they pulled in. “Like something out of a cartoon.”

They drove down the dirt driveway towards the main building and an old woman emerged teetering from behind the screen door.

“I dunno if this is a good idea,” Ed said. The woman waved at them as they approached. “It’s too far out of the city. We’re stringing her along.”

“It’ll be fun,” Roy said, switching off the car, waving at the teetering old woman. “Haven’t you ever fantasized about owning a farm? Play with it.”

“Who fantasizes about owning farms?”

“Stressed people. Humour me. _Hello, Mrs. Morten!_ ”

“ _Hello there, boys!_ ” she called back. “Roy, is it? Thank you for coming!”

“Thank you for having us!” Roy climbed out of the car and shook her hand. “What a beautiful property.”

“Oh, it’s not much. And you came all the way out here.”

Out of the car, Ed felt the sun beat down on him. His left leg always heated faster than the right one, even under slacks, and it never stopped being a strange sensation. 

“Hullo.”

“Hello, young man! Two of you, what a treat.”

He avoided standing too close to Roy when they were shoulder to shoulder; the height difference became pronounced.

“Yes, this is Edward,” Roy said, and he curled an arm around Ed’s shoulders. Ed froze. “He’s the one looking for a clinic, I’m just here to support.”

“Oh!” The woman’s eyebrows rose, staring at Roy’s hand on his shoulder. “Well, isn’t that lovely.”

Ed couldn’t place her tone and his brain was _screaming_ with the uncertainty of it. But to his surprise, he didn’t shake Roy’s arm off. He just smiled at the woman.

“Thanks for having us.”

—

As he suspected, the clinic was just fine, but not as good as Knox’s. It was bright and old and the walls were covered with coloured tiles, small and crowded, quaint. They followed the old woman around to each room and listened to her talk about the history of the space and all the things it had been used for. 

Roy had his arm around his waist the whole time.

“You’re being stupid,” Ed said lowly, when the woman wandered into another room.

“It’s nothing.” Roy turned his head and spoke into his hair. “No last names, and this far out of the city? Let an old man pretend.”

Ed snorted. The woman paused in her monologue about how the sun coming through the back windows did so much for patients’ well-being and gave them a coy look over her shoulder. She hadn’t said anything about it yet and it made Ed nervous. He liked old people and they liked him, but he’d never been _with_ someone in front of anyone and it was making him... unsure. He kept thinking about him and Roy in this stupid ancient clinic in the country, living in the apartments above it, keeping a few animals and drinking juleps on the back porch and it made him—again, he didn’t know what to call it. He didn’t hate it. He _opposite_ of hated it. Which, if he was being honest, scared him a little. 

He had to remind himself: that wasn’t how it would be. They both worked all the time. Roy had never, and could never, ‘be himself.’ Ed hadn’t been either, not really. It was complicated and it would always be complicated and juleps on the porch wasn’t in their future, not in any reality Ed would entertain. It wasn’t what he wanted, anyways, but it made him think about what he _did_ want and that was hard in it’s own way.

“That about covers it,” the lady said, swinging open the screen door to the fields beyond. “There are folks in the other buildings, but they won’t mind you none. Christine raises fowl and I never know what Guillame is up to, but he keeps to himself.” She squinted into the sun. “You looking at other places?”

Ed nodded. “A few more into the city. But… I don’t know. I’m from Resembool, and it’s just nice to…”

“It never leaves you,” the woman said earnestly. “Being raised out in the country, with the _sprawl._ You get a bigger soul than most, with all that space to grow.”

Roy laughed. “So that’s what it is.”

The woman beamed up at them. Chickens babbled in the back of the property as they walked around the side of the building and tires crunched on gravel as someone approached the house.

“You’ve got my number, give me a call if you’d like to make an offer. No rush.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Morten. It’s wonderful, really.” Ed shook her hand, and she shook his so hard his knuckles ground together.

“Pleasure’s all mine. Stay safe getting back into town.”

She went back the way they came and the two of them were alone by the edge of the porch. Roy slid his sunglasses back on.

“I told you it would be nice.”

“She didn’t say anything.”

“Not everyone cares. Some people are just… you know. Pleased to see a couple of handsome men touching each other.”

Ed choked back a laugh. “Oh, whatever. _You’re_ the handsome one, you look like a centerfold.”

“Please, I do not.”

“Don’t be humble, you sound stupid.”

“I’m serious!” Roy smiled, stepping into his space. “Have you considered that your… _affection for me_ … colours your opinion of how handsome I am?”

“You’re hot because you’re hot. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact.”

“I’ve been called _shrewish by_ some.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Homely, even. Weak-featured.”

“You’re just trying to rile me up.”

“Why would this rile you up?”

“Because you’re saying I have bad taste!”

“I’m saying you _like me._ That’s why you think I’m attractive.”

Roy’s hand slid down his back and slipped into the back pocket of his jeans. The sun was behind him, a halo around his head. Ed leaned up, smiling.

“Pure speculation.”

_“General Mustang!”_

A voice crackled into their quiet world. Ed jumped a foot in the air and Roy’s hands left him instantly, like they’d never been there.

A man was walking up the driveway from a red car. He was exceedingly tall and relatively handsome but somehow unpleasant to look at, like his features weren’t arranged properly. He had thinning brown hair and a long brown coat that almost reached the ground.

“Fancy meeting you here!” His voice boomed as he approached them, all but sauntering. Ed didn’t know what to do.

“Metock,” Roy said between his teeth.

Ed half remembered the name: the man trying to get Roy fired. Goosebumps raised all down his arms.

“And so far out of the city,” Metock went on, “on a weekday. Almost as if you’re _trying_ not to be found.”

Roy had gone very still. It was terrifying to see, like a cornered wolf with his ears back.

“I took the morning off. Which is none of your business.”

“Of course it’s not. You’re due a break now and again, being so… _busy_.” Metock’s eyes landed on Ed. He looked so obviously and batantly pleased, syrupy sweet, a cat with a canary. “And you are?”

Ed said nothing. His hands balled into fists. Roy didn’t answer either. Metock went on.

“You always did strike me as a _secret double life_ kind of man, Mustang, I should have known that all I had to do was wait.”

“Or tail me on my day off.” Roy paused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Has that line ever worked for you? Well, no matter. I doubt you’ve ever been so—” His eyes flicked down to Ed. “—compromised.”

Again, Roy didn’t answer; Ed had never seen him like this. It reminded him of a courtroom, _I won’t say anything without my lawyer present_. Was this really that bad?

Metock drawled, “I have dinner with Rothman tonight. I’m sure he’ll be _deeply_ interested in knowing what I’ve been up to today. The sights I’ve seen. Et-cet-er-a.”

“I don’t think he will be.”

“Oh, I do. He’s a bit of a hardass, isn’t he? You’ve heard his grand speeches about traditional values, I’m sure _—_ all that claptrap about dismantling a gun in thirty seconds and writing letters to the wife and kids back home. You being his direct report and all.”

Ed’s palms were sweating. He couldn’t think of anything to say to make it better but there had to be something, he had to help, why wasn’t Roy saying anything?

Metock’s smile widened. “I see I’ve caught you at a bad time, General. I’ll leave you to it.” He raised his eyebrows at Ed. “Nice to meet you.”

Then, as easily as he came, he got back in his car and left. The two of them just stood there and watched him go, silent until his car was almost out of sight.

“I was prepared to knock his teeth out if he said one single thing about you,” Roy said, his voice almost but not quite wobbling. “The _nice to meet you_ wasn’t enough.”

Would it really be so easy to bring it all down? If they were in the wrong place at the wrong time _once_ , was Roy’s career over? What if Roy had hit the guy, or even said something he shouldn’t? He was supposed to be the one to fly off the handle, not Roy. What if it wasn’t Metock but someone else, some other general with a penchant for _traditional values?_ That was all it would take, and it would be Ed’s fault.

“Edward?”

“Hm?”

His face was numb.

“You’re okay?”

“Are _you?”_

Roy ran a hand through his hair. His gaze was distant, looking somewhere over Ed’s head.

“He was lying,” he said faintly. “He doesn’t have dinner with Rothman tonight, it’s the charity gala.”

Ed squinted at him. “Charity gala?”

“Everyone goes, it’s an annual thing in partnership with the city. Rent out a big ballroom or mansion… that kind of thing. You eat _at_ it, you don’t go to dinner beforehand. It’s at the, uh… I forget the name.”

Metock could find Roy’s boss at any time. He sounded so confident. Ed couldn’t imagine a world in which it was so easy to ruin someone, with something so cartoonishly _evil_. He was stupid to think that wasn’t the world he lived in and learning that it was made him feel sick to his stomach.

“I don’t suppose you brought formalwear,” Roy said, still distracted. Ed was shaken out of his reverie.

“Why?”

“You should come as my guest. I’m sure you’re capable of doing lovely things with your hair when you try.”

“I’ve never tried.” He cocked his head. “Guest as in _date?”_

“Not on the books. But in my head, yes.” Roy looked away. “On the books, you’d be an old colleague and famous veteran back in town after a wilderness sabbatical.”

“Is that… wise? After this?”

Roy sighed and started off towards the car.

“We wouldn’t rub their noses in it, but if I’m going to get dishonourably discharged, I’d like to at least have fun at my final gala.”

“Are they normally not fun?”

“It would be more fun with you. There’ll be an open bar and a lot of old money to gently mock.”

That didn’t sound bad, but mostly, Ed didn’t want to let him go alone. When he got into the car, he rested his forehead on the steering wheel; after a moment, Ed put a hand on his arm.

“I’ll find a tux.”

—

When Al came home that evening, Ed was sitting on the floor in his underwear in front of the floor mirror, trying to twist his hair back into some complicated kind of bun.

“I thought you’d settled permanently into the high ponytail,” Al said, throwing his bag onto the bed. “Trying something new?”

Ed bit a bobby pin between his front teeth.

“I have been invited to a charity gala.”

“Mustang?”

“Who else?”

“As his date?”

“As a celebrated veteran of the Amestrian army.”

“Well, that’s bullshit.”

“I _am_ a celebrated veteran of the Amestrian army.”

“You’re also his date.”

“Obviously I’m his date.” Ed tried to twist a braid at his temple back into the mass of the bun at the back of his head. “I want to do my hair all fancy. My suit is just regular.”

“I’m sure it’s nice.” Al sat on the end of his bed and watched Ed struggle. He had two hair ties snarled in his tangle of hair and at least five bobby pins that could be seen. “Are you okay?”

Ed spat out a bobby pin and let his hands drop into his lap.

“He makes me happy,” he said all at once, a rush, a confession. “I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what it means.”

“Ed…”

“What happens if we start dating and I don’t like it? I just break up with him? I’ve known him my whole life, how’s that supposed to work?”

He couldn’t keep the panic out of his tone. Al spoke to him like he was talking down a jumper.

“He’s a grown man, I’m sure he’s had his share of breakups.”

“Well, I haven’t! What if I don’t have the guts to break it off, and then I just date him until I die? I’m not ready to date someone until I die!”

“You have the guts for everything! And you haven’t even started dating him, why are you worried about breaking up?” Al paused. “This is why you’ve been so weird about sleeping with him. You like him.”

Ed rubbed his forehead. “I guess so.”

Al got off the bed and crouched on the floor in front of Ed, peering into his face.

“You like him a _lot_.”

“So what if I do?”

“So nothing, Ed! You’re the only one who’s being so weird about this! It’s _fine_ if you’re in love with him, you freak!”

“I’m probably not in love with him! Leave me alone!”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re in love with him!” Al grabbed his hands and held him still. “I’m sorry, okay? About this whole trip. I thought you were being thoughtless and rude about dating a guy we both like and respect, and I was mad at you. You didn’t tell me you were this worked up about it.”

“I didn’t know I was.” Ed pulled his hands free and stared at his reflection in the mirror. “He… he just _says_ this stuff to me, sometimes, and I think… no one else is ever gonna know me like this. He acts like I’m this—this cool, weird puzzle that he can’t stop thinking about. I dunno.”

“He’s infatuated with you.”

“Probably,” Ed said again. It didn’t seem right, but he couldn’t argue with it. All this time, had he been testing Roy, bothering him in an attempt to finally catch him in a lie? _Aha! Got you! You don’t like me at all, you’re just going to incredible lengths to—_ to what? What could Roy possibly gain by making Ed fall for him? There was no answer besides the obvious. _Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth._

And, maybe, it had cost Roy his life’s work. He was trying not to think about that part.

“What are you going to _do?”_ Al asked, in that way that said that he really meant it. Ed shook his head.

“Please just help me do something good with my hair,” he said miserably, gesturing at his tangled mass. “You’re good at this stuff.”

Al laughed softly and gave him a half hug. “Only because you’re having a crisis.”

—

Ed locked the door behind him. Roy would be there in ten minutes and it was easier to wait on the street than deal with Al leering at them, and he wanted time to clear his head. He moved carefully, worried he’d disturb his hair; Al had fixed it into an ornate, twisted bun at his nape, with braids woven through. He’d never understand how he did it. His tux was plain, black, and fit him well enough.

“Edward.” Roy appeared at the end of the hall, hand raised in greeting. “I was going to come up.”

“Oh.”

Roy’s wore his full dress military uniform, rarely seen on anyone in modern life; it was the same blue as everyday Amestrian military attire, but the jacket and trousers were a slimmer cut and it was customary to wear medals and other shiny pins on the chest. He wore a long cape pinned at the shoulders with gold brooches and piped with a golden braid. A ceremonial sword hung at his hip in a gilded scabbard. His hair was slicked back, flecked with silver, and he looked like the head of some ancient king’s royal guard, something out of a fairytale. Ed met him at the top of the stairs.

“You look…” He searched for something other than _very, very good_. “... regal.”

Roy smiled at him. Ed felt concussed.

“I look like I’m in the _Nutcracker_ and I’ll be basting in sweat in a few hours, but thank you.” He gave him an appreciative, unsubtle once-over. “You look upsettingly handsome.”

Ed’s ears got hot. “Okay.”

Roy gestured for him to head down the stairs, so he did. “I didn’t think you’d actually do your hair.”

“Be careful what you wish for. Now I look fantastic.”

“You do, and it’s going to make this evening extremely difficult.”

Roy reached over him with one perfectly white-gloved hand and opened the door with a flourish. He could smell his cologne, sharp and spicy, and the cold, smoky scent of the night air as they took off down the street. He felt wildly underdressed but he couldn’t imagine a civilian was supposed to own anything as gaudy as all that. He kept sneaking glances at him as they walked. All the pomp and circumstance made him look older than usual in a way that really, really worked for him.

“Is the sword real?” Ed asked, reaching past his cape to touch it. Roy flicked it out of the sheath with his thumb and the long, thin blade glinted like mercury.

“If I could move in this getup at all, I’d ask if you want to find out the hard way.”

Ed laughed. “I couldn’t hold my own anymore. I never actually learned how to _hold_ a sword, I just _was_ a sword.”

“An important distinction,” Roy agreed. “Well, I can’t use it much either. Never my thing.”

He sounded better than he had earlier, more put-together, but Ed wasn’t naive enough to think he was doing well.

“How are you?”

Roy opened the rear door of their hired car for him.

“Dead inside, but thank you for asking.”

Ed patted him on the arm. “Nothing a little liquor can’t fix.”

Their driver gave them their privacy as they sped down the streets to a moneyed neighbourhood Ed had never been to, all emerald lawns and white columns.

“I can’t believe you’re going.”

“I don’t _know_ that my career is over. Maybe Metock died on the way over.”

“Maybe you’ll be surprised.”

“By what?”

Ed grimaced. “People’s capacity for kindness?”

Roy huffed a little laugh. “I haven’t been yet, but I admire your optimism.”

More giant, identical houses sped by. “Should I really be here?”

“It’s fine,” Roy said again. His hand inched towards Ed’s across the seat between them. “Not to get too maudlin about it, but the thought of going without you makes me want to die, and I have to go, so. Thank you for coming.”

Ed let the sides of their pinkies touch. “As if I’d miss a chance to see you in that get-up.”

The gala was in some kind of hall, Ed didn’t know what to call it, a big, old building made of brick and covered in vines that was too big to be someone’s home. Their car pulled up out front and Roy stared up at it, taking a long, slow inhale.

“All this time, and it comes to this,” he said softly. “A lifetime of effort thwarted by some asshole who tailed my car.”

“I can fight him, if you want. The arm’s gone, but the leg still has some tricks.” Ed wasn’t great at being sincere.

“I spy a balcony on the top floor you could kick him off,” Roy said. He didn’t seem to mind.

There were people milling around outside, smoking, talking, dotted up the long walk to the front door. Ed was relieved to find he wasn’t underdressed, for a civilian. The military men wore Roy’s same uniform or a less ostentatious version of it—no one’s was _more_ ostentatious, which made Ed proud in a way he didn’t appreciate—and the civilians wore tuxedos and ball gowns, all glitter and gold and sleekness. The doorman greeted Roy with a stiff salute and Roy raised a polite hand at him. The man’s eyes then fell on Ed, with an implacable expression that Ed figured he’d better get used to; _curious/confused/interested/disapproving/is-that-who-I-think-it-is?_

Servers glided around offering canapes and flutes of champagne. There didn’t seem to be a central _thing_ going on, just people schmoozing in ever-circulating clumps, eating and drinking to the sound of a twinkling piano somewhere. The ceilings floated unimaginably high above them, everything draped in greens and blues and twinkling lights, oil paintings, gilding upon gilding.

“This is so insane,” Ed said quietly as they made their way into the room. “Is this how rich people are?”

“No, this is performativeness at its best. Top tier and absolutely ridiculous.”

Ed glanced up at Roy. His stress was obvious to anyone who knew enough to find it, but Ed doubted that anyone in the room did. There was a tightness to the faint smile he plastered on that made Ed tense in turn.

“Where’s…”

“As long as he’s not by the bar, I don’t care.” Roy put a hand between his shoulder blades and guided him into the next room. “You’ve literally never worried in your life, don’t start on my account. I worry enough for both of us.”

The weight of his hand on his back was comforting beyond all measure of comparison.

“Yes, sir.”

“Shush, you brat.”

Having a drink in your hand was evidently the signal that you’d been at the party for long enough to be spoken to. People descended on them a few at a time and it was exactly the blend of stressful and boring that Ed expected it to be, but it wasn’t all bad; some asked him about his work and seemed halfway interested in his response, and other than that, he got to listen to Roy talk, which was nice. Otherwise, he fielded inane questions about where he’d been the past five-plus years or why he didn’t do alchemy anymore, which he answered through gritted teeth.

When they slipped away to go back to the bar, Ed asked, “Will it look weird if we don’t split up for a bit? I can… I don’t know, mingle.”

“I don’t give a shit how it looks, you’re—” He looked at Ed with an unexpected flare of passion and Ed expected him to say something grandiose like _mine_ and a not-insignificant part of him chanted _say it, say it, say it!_ “—you’re welcome to mingle if you’d like, but don’t do it for me.”

“I don’t—”

“Mustang.” A voice like a towering oak boomed from behind Ed. He tipped his head back and looked up. A wall of a man in a uniform that paralleled Roy’s stood behind him, curly gray hair and a salt-and-pepper beard. Roy saluted the man as Ed stepped out of the way.

“Field-Marshal Rothman,” he said stiffly. Roy’s superior. “Having a pleasant evening?”

Rothman seemed in no mood.

“Brigadier General Metock called me on my way out babbling like a kid with a secret, demanding an emergency meeting. I obliged.” He looked down at Ed, as if noticing him for the first time. “Let’s go somewhere private.”

Roy nodded assent. He touched Ed’s arm and said, quiet, “I’ll be back,” and walked with Rothman out of the main hall towards the wide marble staircase that curled up to the second floor.

For the first time, Ed was left alone with his thoughts, clutching his drink off to the side of the bar, next to a large potted citrus tree. 

He had been lying earlier, of course: he was worrying and he hated it. Worrying was impotent and useless and yet he couldn’t do anything else. He couldn’t _talk_ Roy out of this situation, and he couldn’t do anything better, either. He put his drink down on the bar and, for the thousandth time since he was seventeen, he gingerly touched his palms together and pictured an array. Nothing, obviously. And not that there would have been a way to alchemize Roy out of his current situation, but it would’ve made him feel better. He picked up his drink and stared into it—CnH2n+1OH, C10H16, some other shit. He couldn’t break things down like he used to.

“Excuse me…”

He jumped. A woman with slicked-back hair was hovering in front of him, half a head taller than him and some years older. She was startlingly beautiful and Ed felt awkward just looking at her; he never knew what to do around women, these weird and wonderful people he knew nothing about. He always figured he’d grow out of the awkwardness but he hadn’t yet, and Al—who knew exactly how to talk to women—roasted him for it constantly.

“Hi! Sorry. How’s it… going?”

She laughed, not unkindly.

“Good. Marta Bronwyn, nice to meet you.”

She put her hand out to shake and Ed shook it. “Ed Elric. Nice to meet you.”

“I know who you are,” she teased. “ _Obviously_ I know who you are.”

“Why would you know who I am?”

“Because everyone knows who you are. Are you not aware of that?”

Ed slurped his drink loudly. “I try to forget.”

She laughed again. “That makes sense. I can’t imagine. You were like… a child celebrity. That has to be tough.”

“I’ve never thought about it.” He had thought about it. It was tough.

She added, “‘Celebrity’ isn’t the right word, though, sorry. I don’t mean to trivialize. I don’t think there’s a word for what you did.” Ed appreciated the gravity; too often, he found himself fielding glib conversations around what happened, as if overthrowing a non-human government prepared to murder its citizens to become God was on par with a really stellar radio play. He was going to say that it wasn’t _him_ who did everything, it was so many people, but Marta went on. “Did the Fuhrer invite you himself? Or are you here with someone?”

“Roy Mustang. We’re… friends.” He let himself imagine a world (a future?) where he could elaborate. “I mean, considering everything.”

“That’s neat. He’s a really wonderful man, from what I’ve heard.”

Ed’s heart went _flub-dub_. “He is.”

“My little sister’s studying to be an alchemist because of you, you know. That’s why I wanted to say hello,” Marta said. “She’s about your age. She’s getting really good, too. She wants to work in construction, hell if I know why, but it’s good.”

“That’s—I’ve never heard that before.”

“Really? It’s like _magic_ , what you do. I’m sure you’ve made a lot of kids want to be alchemists.”

Ed spotted Roy across the room, coming towards him and blissfully alone. He looked, dazed, lost, but—not unhappy.

“As long as they don’t join the military,” Ed said, eyes glued on Roy. “I have to go, it was nice to meet you. Really.’

Marta gave him a wave in parting and he hurried through the throng of people to Roy.

“Hey!” He put a hand on his arm, maybe more intimate than he should have been. “How’d it go, what did he say?”

“He… he said Metock’s being transferred out of the city.”

_“What?”_

“By him. He said… I don’t remember exactly. _You of all people have earned some privacy from these vultures. Keep quiet about it, and so will we._ ”

Ed scrunched up his face. “That’s not _great_.”

“It’s a start. It’s more than I thought I’d get.” Roy looked down at his upturned hands, which held a fat cigar. “He gave me a cigar for some reason.”

“Well, congratulations,” Ed said, laughing. “Seriously. If it’s good, it’s good. C’mon, let’s go somewhere where you can smoke that thing.”

—

It was easier to breathe outside, looking over the showy topiary of the building’s grounds. A wide cement plaza led from the building scattered with benches and glowing fairy lights. Roy walked ahead, stretching his arms over his head.

“I prepared a whole thing. I was going to _yell._ ”

“Yeah?”

“It’s discrimination, isn’t it? It’s not like I’d just let them fire me.”

Ed followed him down a short flight of stairs to a lower plaza, a concrete table and bench next to a flowering basket that smelled like soap.

“So, now that you’re not fired, you’re not saying the whole thing?”

“Now I get more time to _plan_ the whole thing, and get some additional leverage and backing to make the thing successful. Give me some credit.” Roy wandered closer. He peeked up the stairs over Ed’s shoulder and over the grounds below, and found no one. “You wear the hell out of a tux. I had no idea.”

“Don’t get used to it, I don’t like dressing up.”

“Well, it likes you.”

“Don’t expect me to come to all of these. You get paid to schmooze, and I’m not charitable enough to tag along all the time. If I stay.”

Roy laughed. “That’s fine. I’m starting to accept life as a confirmed bachelor.” He gave another furtive look over Ed’s head. “Besides. There’ll be time.”

He put his hands on his neck and kissed him, long and slow; his tongue flicked against his, wet, warm, vermouth. His toes curled inside his shoes.

“It’s okay,” Roy said quietly. “I don’t know if you need to hear that, but I’ve never seen you stressed before, so. Everything’s okay.”

“I know.”

“ _I’m_ okay.”

“You’re always okay.”

“Exactly.”

Another kiss. His fingers traced the shape of the golden braid over Roy’s chest, Roy’s hands slid appreciatively down his arms. Another few seconds and it was over. Roy bumped their noses, their heads bowed to touch, and Ed let go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

“I don’t worry.”

“It’s okay if you were worried.”

“Worrying isn’t useful. I _fix_ things.”

“This would’ve been a tough one to fix.” Roy sat on the concrete bench and pulled Ed to stand between his knees. Ed searched his features for a few moments, still tense; his dark eyes, long lashes, the way his slicked-back hair made his jaw seem stronger somehow, and how his ears kind of stuck out, plucky and boyish.

He poked a particularly shiny gold and purple medal on Roy’s chest.

“What’s this one for?”

“Getting Gruman’s cat out of a tree.”

“And this one?” He touched another.

“Figure-skating championship, second runner up.”

“This one?”

“Demonstrating outstanding bravery in circumstances of extreme peril.”

Their eyes met.

“That sounds big.”

“Only twelve ever awarded.”

He couldn’t read Roy’s tone. It wasn’t strictly proud, not boastful, just solemn and subdued. Ed sighed, glanced over Roy’s shoulder to make sure the coast was still clear, then ran his hands up his chest. As far as he could go without touching the medals.

“Proud of you.”

“Eh.” Roy closed his hands around his own, brought them to his mouth and kissed them. “Heavy is the… chest that wears the medals.”

“That classic saying.”

“You know what I mean.”

It was really something to have someone dressed like Roy hold his hands with such quiet deference, kissing them like he was a king, cradling them so gently in his own like they were something precious.

“Roy,” he said quietly. “Let’s talk.”

“We are talking.”

“I’m serious.”

He put some space between them and Roy looked up at him with a face that had seen this coming, something tired and disappointed and empty. He took the cigar out of his pocket.

“Can I smoke?”

“Sure.”

Roy lit his cigar and Ed paced, nervous, trying to gather his thoughts; Roy let him, his eyes tracing him back and forth across the small plaza. Roy, who lived in Central along with everyone else who lived in Central, for better or worse. Roy with his big apartment and big responsibility and frightening past and bright future, Roy who looked at him like he was everything, who _he_ looked at like he was everything, the only people either of them wanted to look at in a room full of the most glamorous people in the city. Roy, who was sitting on a glorified park bench and looking sad. He’d never seen anyone look sad while smoking a cigar.

“This isn’t bad,” Ed started. “I mean, I don’t think it’s bad, I just want to talk.”

“You mentioned.”

“I need to sort things out.”

“I’m not _mad,_ Ed. Sort away.”

Had Roy called him ‘Ed’ before? It made his palms sweat.

“I’m new at this,” he said quickly, embarrassment rising to a crescendo. “I like you. A lot. I’ve never liked anyone enough to have them meet my brother, and maybe this doesn’t count because you already know him, but I mean I’d _let_ you see him, as my—as someone I’m with, and I’ve never done that before.”

“I like you, too. Also a lot.”

“I just—I never thought I’d want anyone around for long. I was never interested in that kind of thing, and now, growing up and realizing that maybe I am, it’s kind of upsetting to like… not really know what I want in a partner. I’d never thought about it.”

“That’s alright,” Roy said, slower than before.

“Not that you’re not what I want in a partner!” he said, raising his hands. “I just mean, like—if you’d asked me a year ago whether my type was a forty-year-old military general, I probably would have said no. Unless it reminded me of you specifically, but we weren’t talking last year and I didn’t—”

“I know what you mean. It’s okay.”

“Okay, good. I don’t mean you’re _not_ my type, you are, I mean—God, you make me stupid. I’m not normally like this.”

“Take a deep breath. You sound like how I feel most of the time.”

Ed ran his hands over his face and groaned. “Okay.”

“I’m in no hurry. Say whatever you’d like.”

“Well, just that—it could be you. It could be someone else. I don’t know how I’m supposed to know.”

Roy laughed, not in a mean way.

“That’s _life_ , you beautiful fool. It’s trial and error, knowing yourself, figuring it out. It’s what we’re all here for.”

“The trial and error part is playing with people’s lives, though. That’s not nothing.”

“People get over it. They grow too.”

“So you’re saying if I decide tomorrow that I don’t want this, and I just walked out of your life, that’d be you _growing?_ You’d be all good?”

Roy grimaced. “I would… cope.”

“ _Cope_.”

“I’d recover, that’s the point. My wellbeing shouldn’t be your concern when you’re making a decision like…” He seemed to realize what he was already saying. “Like deciding whether you want to be with me.”

“Your wellbeing matters.”

“So consider it, but it’s not up to you to manage how I feel.”

He looked as tense as Ed felt. He wanted to go over to him but it didn’t seem like the best idea. He wanted to kiss him and kiss him and never stop. He wanted to go to dinner at Gracia’s with him, buy him train station tchotchkes, force him to let him try on his ridiculous uniform, split a bottle of wine with him, keep a toothbrush in his bathroom.

“How do you feel about me?” he heard himself ask. Roy sat up straight. “For real. Or just like… concisely? Nevermind, I don’t know what I’m asking, I—”

“Sometimes, in the right light, when you’re in a good mood, when celestial bodies align _just so_ —”

“Quit it.”

“—I don’t care about anything else,” Roy finished. “Not a damn thing. I think about changing my name and moving out to the country to raise chickens with you. Learning how to plait a fishtail braid. Bringing you wildflowers. The whole nine yards.” He sucked on his cigar with an intentional flourish, joking, as if he weren’t saying something massive. “I think the world could burn around us and I’d try to come up with a funny little joke to make you laugh about it.”

Ed went still. He could hear his heart beat in his ears.

“That’s a lot to say to someone.”

“I know.”

“You aren’t worried it’ll scare me off?”

“I know it might. But I want to give you a full deck to play with, it’s only fair.”

They shared a long, heavy silence. The exterior door on the plaza above opened for a moment and the din of the party inside rang out over the grounds, slicing into the night.

“It does scare me off,” Ed said quietly. Roy didn’t crumple a bit and, Ed thought, it was credit to why he’d be such a great leader. Provided everything didn’t go to shit. “It scares me that you’d give up your goal for anything.”

“Like I said: when celestial bodies align. It’s once in a blue moon and then I go back to my stupid little life, but it still happens.” He ashed his cigar. “And for the record, it scares me, too.”

Ed wrung his hands. “Did you ever think all that with Hawkeye?”

“No, but that was different. All we _had_ were my goals.” Roy glanced up and the look he gave him shot through him like an arrow. “Do you ever think like that?”

Ed went still. _Christ, he’s asking if you’re in love with him_. 

“Maybe,” he said slowly. “I’d need to think about it.”

Roy chuckled. He was looking down at his hands. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re too smart for love?”

“Not until now.”

After a beat, he stubbed out his cigar and crossed to where Ed stood. He bent down and kissed him on the head, which Ed wasn’t sure he appreciated.

“We’ve endured this party long enough. I’ll get you a car.”

—

Roy put him in his own car and said goodnight, which wasn’t good. It was dark in the back seat and he was alone and he was panicking, which wasn’t good _or_ like him.

_You shouldn’t have said anything. It’s controlling to ask for validation. It’s uncool. Is that what you were asking for? Validation? Or were you looking to make him say it, that you’re too much and too complicated and not worth it? Even at a stuffy party you have to be on your toes around him because if anyone sees you LOOKING at each other he’ll get court martialed, apparently!_

Because it was easier than being upset and unsure, he got angry.

_Fuck him for being weird about it! I’m allowed talk about US, I’m allowed ask him things, sue me for not being old and jaded like him! I spent four days on a train coming down here to see him, I’m spending time I could spend with Al to be with him, is that not enough? Before he came up north I hadn’t thought about him in years and it was FINE, I was HAPPY, I didn’t ask for this!_

And then:

_Does wanting to buy someone train station tchotchkes mean you’re in love with them?_

He imagined getting Roy an ugly little tourist trinket from every train station gift shop he passed, gaudy snow globes and painted tin minutiae, a paperweight shaped like a mail box, a blown glass hummingbird, a sign that said ‘don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee,’ each thing stupider than the last. It would be so funny to see him be straight about it at first—kind and sincere about the gifts as he put each one out on display on his desk—and then slowly less and less kind as he realized Ed was doing it to make fun of him. It would bring him unparalleled joy to pull off such a long con and see how many he could get him to put on his desk before he figured out that his judgement in gift-giving couldn’t possibly be _that_ bad. He would put a lot of them on his desk, he thought, maybe long after he realized Ed was messing with him, because no matter how ugly and dumb the tchotchkes were, they meant Ed had been thinking about him on his travels. And he would have been, of course. He’d think about Roy all the time.

“‘Scuse me,” he said to the driver, “could you take me to the big apartment building downtown, with the green awning?”

—

The old elevator operator remembered him and let him up to Roy’s floor. His heart was thundering in his ears and his body felt swollen and angry and nervous, regret flip-flopping with passion and certainty. Roy’s door was down at the end. He knocked, feeling stupid and praying he hadn’t gone out for a night cap.

Footsteps on the other side. He still had a few seconds to run.

The door opened and Roy stood there barefoot, wearing his short cotton house robe and the glitzy cape of his full dress uniform. His hair had been tousled but still crackled with gel.

“Edward.” He looked mortified. “Is… everything alright at home?”

“I want to talk. More. From earlier.”

“I…”

“Please. I don’t—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Roy backed up a little. “Not because I don’t value what you have to say but _because_ I do, I’m—I’m not at my best. This isn’t a good time. Tomorrow.”

“Please,” Ed tried again, inching his left foot towards the door in case Roy slammed it. “I’ll just be a sec, I don’t want to—”

“I’ll say something I’ll regret,” Roy said, not looking quite at him. “I care about you and I’ll—you don’t need to hear all this, it doesn’t matter, just—”

“It does matter! Five minutes, Roy, please, don’t make me think about this all night.”

“I’m begging you to let me cope in peace.”

“It’ll be good! I promise!”

Roy’s hand, clutching the door, went limp. He ran it over his face and left it there for a second.

“Five minutes,” he said from behind the hand. “And let me take the cape off first.”

Ed stepped gingerly inside. “It’s a good look.”

Roy scoffed and disappeared into his bedroom. Ed hesitated in the hallway before slipping into the study, where a still-cold glass of wine sat on the end table. Like before, Roy’s apartment smelled so much like Roy and it made him dizzy with fondness and lust and, now, regret. He had to do this right.

Roy returned wearing a blue sweater over his robe, which would have been funny if things weren’t so important. His hair had been somewhat smoothed.

He said, “Let me go first,” before Ed could speak. “I gave you some half answers earlier and I want to be absolutely clear.”

Ed sunk to sit on the loveseat, his hands clasped between his knees to keep from fidgeting. “Okay.”

Roy took a deep breath and leaned on the arm of the sofa. He still couldn’t look right at him and seemed to be focusing on Ed’s left ear.

“I want… all of you.” His voice was hard and serious. “I understand that you’re young and you want your freedom, and I’m not here to tether you. Travel the world and open a thousand clinics, open none and become a lion-tamer, the choice is yours. I don’t care if it’s you and me for two months or twenty years, but I want it to be real.”

“Roy…”

“This has been fun. Fantastic. Soul-crushingly perfect. But even _I’m_ not stupid enough to keep doing this to myself. If you want to stay in Central, let’s just run into each other once in a while and be pleasant, and maybe if you’re drunk, we’ll fuck like animals and I’ll leave completely soulless and empty.” He looked down at his hands. “And I’ll tell my future ex-wife about it when she asks why I’m emotionally unavailable.”

Ed swallowed hard. 

“That sounds horrible.”

“I’m being realistic.” Roy shrugged, miserable. “Don’t worry about me. Don’t do this because you’re too afraid not to. If you think you can lie to me for any longer than a few days, you don’t think very much of me.”

“I think a lot of you.”

“Well, good. Then please, _please_ do not be with me because you don’t want to say no to me. I think that’s fair to ask.”

He walked through the future of Roy’s imagining, where he ran into a gray-haired Roy on the street and didn’t have anything to say to him. A future Roy who was with someone else, not with him, not part of the neat little thing they were building between them, day by day for the past few weeks and during every second they were around one another, every time he learned something new about him that he filed away into a meticulously-managed Roy Rolodex in his brain that he found himself poring over every free moment he had. That scared him more than any maybe-what-if that he could come up with.

“You’re good to me,” he said softly. Roy waved his hand.

“You’re good to be good to. We’ve both had enough _bad_ in our lives, and you don’t even deserve yours.” He slid off the arm of the loveseat to sit next to Ed, close enough that their knees bumped. “Thank you for letting me try. This really has been a wonderful, wonderful couple of weeks, they’re their own merit. Maybe this is just a case of _too good to be true_.” He reached out and curled Ed’s hair behind his ear, a sappy habit he’d picked up in their short time together. “In another lifetime, maybe.”

Ed heard his own voice before he registered saying anything. Whatever it meant, whatever uncertainty he had, he wanted it. He wanted Roy and Central and his stupid little life, and he couldn't stand having it any other way.

“I want _this_ lifetime.” He grabbed Roy’s hand and brought it to his cheek. “As if you’d make me wait.”

He tugged him into a kiss. It was clumsy at first as Roy stumbled into the wordless _yes_ of it and then deeper as he caught up, sunk into it and didn’t come up for air for a very, very long time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two little drawings for this one, one of [summer](https://ronibravo.tumblr.com/post/627482016150110208) and the other [roy's fancy outfit](https://ronibravo.tumblr.com/post/634105809936302080).

**Author's Note:**

> [my other fma fics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/applecrumbledore/works?fandom_id=2954180) / [tw](http://www.twitter.com/cleenteath) / [tu](http://ronibravo.tumblr.com)


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